Rez
by peacensafety
Summary: Stiles has lived his whole life on the fey reservation in Toad Suck. When his dad is called as an arbitrator between humans, werewolves, and shapeshifters, he finally gets to meet new people and creatures he's only heard stories about before. AU, Sterek, homosexual situations. I also stole some ideas from Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series.
1. Chapter 1

It obviously wasn't the issue of the reservation being the worst place ever that made him want to go somewhere else, anywhere else. Stiles didn't mind the intermittent availability of water and electricity, the HUD houses everyone lived in, the scarcity of jobs and the government deliveries of basic necessities. That was normal, or had been normal almost every day of his entire sixteen years of life. There were times when food was plentiful and times when he and his dad were stuck depending on the nature fey to share, and there was nothing worse than being indebted to a fey, everyone knew that. Of course, it was simple for Stiles and his dad to avoid that for obvious reasons; the government didn't like it when either one of them owed anybody anything, unless it was them.

It wasn't even the name of the reservation. Most of his peers complained loudly that it was demoralizing to be from Toad Suck Reservation in Arkansas but Stiles didn't care because it wasn't like he was one of those who could even get a Visa to visit Outside, so anyone he was ever introduced to was already a Rez member.

It wasn't even that Stiles had very few friends. Being a _metalzauber_ on a fey reservation meant that most of the things Stiles wanted to play with made his nature loving friends sick to their stomachs. Some of them even broke out into hives when they were at his house. So it was without saying that Stiles didn't have a plethora of companions, but Stiles could talk to himself and keep himself company plenty fine.

No, Stiles wanted to leave for the simple fact that there was Somewhere Else. There were other places in the world, and Stiles wanted to see them, not just stare at pictures and vids of them from his tablet screen. There were a million places he wanted to go, a million things he wanted to see and hear and taste and touch, and all of them were separated by a six foot brick and stone wall to keep the fey in and more importantly, the humans out.

Humans really didn't understand fey, as proved by the fact that they wanted them locked up and away from them once they had figured out the walls between their reality and Fairie had broken a couple thousand years ago (and it had only taken them that long to figure it out; really, Stiles thought that humans had to be stupid for that one alone). Stiles's dad tried explaining the strange value system of the humans, where paper was valued above all other things, especially if that paper had printed words or numbers on them. Then his dad launched into a lecture about Capitalism, but Stiles wasn't paying attention at all at that point. He was still trying to wrap his head around thinking paper was important.

Everyone knew that the fey dealt in favors. Paper couldn't get you anything that you wanted or needed, it wouldn't get you love or trust or power or teach you how to take care of the things around you, the people in your life or the elements that surrounded you. And it didn't matter if Stiles didn't understand this value system because it wasn't like he was ever going to leave the reservation.

Stiles sat half-listening in his history class, trying to figure out a way to make a deal with the government to let him go see things. It wasn't like history was boring, it was awesome to listen to the history teacher talking about what had happened in the past, especially since for most of it he was there. It was great having a history teacher a couple of thousand years old, especially since that history teacher had been a teacher to Merlin and a couple of European kings and some witches that had burned at the stake when the humans got scared of other humans with magic.

That was another thing Stiles didn't understand. Humans killed each other, but then it was so easy for them to have children that they must not value each other. Stiles was the only son of his parents who had been married for almost three hundred years, and he was the last one born of his kind. Metalzaubers were very rare, and his dad said that besides him and Stiles, there were probably three others left on the planet who could control and manipulate metal like them. Most of them were killed in the great dragon wars over a thousand years ago, since dragons were really the only things that could kill metalzaubers, anyway. And everyone knew there was only one dragon left on the entire planet. Well, maybe not the humans, but all of the fey.

"Mr. Stilinski," the teacher called his name.

"Yeah?" Stiles asked.

"Mr. Stilinski, you aren't paying attention, are you?" the teacher tapped his foot a few times, giving him a look that was filled with disdain.

"No sir, sorry sir," Stiles said, feeling ashamed. He really liked this teacher.

"Perhaps you should go outside and center yourself?" the teacher asked. It wasn't like they had a time limit to complete school, so attendance was spotty at best. Stiles was the only one he knew who wanted to get it over with, because he wanted to Go Outside. Everyone knew it, although he was laughed at a lot for it. There were those who were too powerful to ever leave the reservation, and Stiles was one of them.

"Yes sir," Stiles said, pulling on his red hoodie. "I'll see you tomorrow," he called over his shoulder, leaving the rest of the class who had wandered in giggling at him. They were all in their thirties and forties, just now getting around to taking high school.

"Relax, Stiles," one of them called after him. "You'll grow up in a hundred years or so. Don't rush it."

Stiles gave them a sheepish grin, waving at them as he walked outside of the building. It was hot, but it was almost always hot in Arkansas. Stiles had seen snow once, and the ice giants and cold spirits had gloried in the half inch of white while it had lasted for four hours. They sat around afterwards and told stories, about when they were free, and they could go to the northerly places and play in feet of the stuff. Stiles found it fascinating, but that didn't mean anything because Stiles found everything fascinating.

Stiles walked out of the school doors and stopped. Seated underneath the tree, reading a comic book, was a boy who looked like he was nine or ten years old. He had bright red hair and slanting green eyes, and when Stiles left the building he grinned up at Stiles with a look that belied his supposed youth.

Fey didn't age like humans, and Stiles knew that this particular fey was very young for his race, only a couple of thousand years old. Stiles smiled back at the last of the dragons, his principal and the only one who could teach him anything about metal that Stiles didn't already know.

"Rupert," Stiles greeted him by the name that he had chosen for this decade. Dragons loved names, although they never told anyone their true name. No fey ever shared their real names with anyone, unless that person was their mate.

"Hello, Stiles," the dragon said to him, putting his comic book aside and sitting up straighter. "How are you today?"

"Distracted," Stiles said. "Dumbledore sent me outside."

Rupert laughed at the nickname that Stiles had given his history professor. He loved Harry Potter as much as Stiles did, and his nickname for his professor had caught on with the student body, and the professor didn't care because Harry Potter had gone over very well with the fey population. It was also where Rupert had gotten his name for the decade.

"Stiles, you and I have been friends your entire life, haven't we?" Rupert asked, drawing his fingers over the comic book in the grass next to him.

"Yes," Stiles said, sitting down next to him and drawing a little in the red dirt underneath the grass. He liked the feel of the iron in the soil; it calmed him and made his mind quit wandering.

"You're always wanting stories about the outside world," Rupert said. Stiles didn't respond because it wasn't a question, and he figured that dragons liked to draw things out. They lived for such a long time that Stiles figured they just wanted to fill up that time with stories and poems, which never really bothered him either way. "What do you know about shape-shifters?"

"They're humans that can change shapes into animals?" Stiles asked.

"Do you know how they're different than fey?" the old dragon asked him with a boy's face alight with curiosity.

"Yeah," Stiles said. "The European killed all of their shape shifters, except for the werewolves because human wizards and the undead kept them as bodyguards, and the humans weren't powerful enough to fight them when they were organized like that. Most other cultures revered their magical humans, and so they were left free. There are some shape shifters who can change others into beings like themselves, especially European werewolves because they were so close to wizards for so long that their blood has magic in it."

"Most of that magic was put into their blood by wizards," Rupert amended Stiles's recitation of history.

Stiles nodded his head, he hadn't known that but it made sense.

"Do you know how werewolves feel about the fey?" Rupert asked him.

Stiles shook his head. He didn't know how anyone really felt about the fey, other than they needed to be kept locked up for some reason. His access to the Internet was given on the grounds that he didn't hack around the firewalls imposed on the reservation by the government. So many walls, it made Stiles's heart sink. He wished he could just peek, just a little, around them.

"Werewolves don't really know a whole lot about us. Most people don't know a whole lot about us," Rupert said kind of quickly, and Stiles was startled by the rush of words. No one spoke quickly on the reservation, there was never a reason for any of them to do anything with any kind of speed. "Most people think we are all the same, that we hate metal and we don't like them and that we're out to steal their souls. Most people think we are like the Christian devil and we want to steal their children. Werewolves, who are clannish on the best of days, will never let a fey near them or their cubs because they are scared that we will steal their pups. There is a deep distrust of the fey outside the walls of Toad Suck."

Stiles was shocked. Why would anyone distrust him? He was a good boy: he always ate his vegetables and he helped the other fey any time one of their machines went down, he never lied and he never cheated at games. He even went to school, just like the humans did, and he worked really hard to make good grades on the human standardized tests. And why in the world would he steal children or puppies?

"Humans too, they distrust us. They are scared of anything with power, and Stiles, you have a lot of power. You must never let anyone know the full extent of your power, because humans will kill you for it. They might think that they can steal it from you, but it is your blood that makes you this way. You have to know this."

"Why?" Stiles asked. "Why are you telling me these horrible things?"

The dragon stood on his very short legs, looking down at Stiles. Stiles had seen the dragon's true form at night, when he flew amongst the stars and the humans had cleared the sky for him to stretch his wings, and once the dragon had even taken him flying with him. "You must never tell any human what goes on at the reservation, Stiles. If they knew about your peers, if they knew about me… they would burn our homes to the ground. They do it every time they find out about how much power we have, so never tell anyone your secrets. You know your history, you know what happened the last time someone told a secret."

Stiles nodded, still confused. He knew that telling the wrong person a secret had ended in disaster for his people last time. It had been a brownie, who had begged not to be fired as a maid from a Senator's house, who had let everyone know that they fey still existed. It didn't take the humans long, in their overwhelming numbers, to round every last one of them up and set them behind the walls of the three fey reservations, just as they had done to the werewolves only ten years beforehand.

Stiles hadn't been born yet, but his dad told him of the nightmarish things that humans were capable of. Toad Suck was one of them, and it was where the most powerful fey were kept under armed guard, six foot walls, and spells that the human wizards had come up with. Scientists, Stiles reminded himself, the humans didn't call them wizards anymore; they were called scientists.

"You should go home," Rupert said, his green eyes no longer twinkling.

"Rupert," Stiles started to say, but the dragon looked sad.

"You have been a fun playmate," Rupert said, reaching out and stroking Stiles's cheek.

"What's going on?" Stiles asked.

Rupert walked away without answering, and Stiles knew better than to chase a dragon, even if his human exterior was only nine or ten years old.

Stiles gathered up his backpack and started walking home. He hated that he couldn't drive the old Jeep that one of the soldiers right outside the wall had given him to fix up, but the metal in proximity to so many fey made them sick to their stomachs, so Stiles was stuck with driving it on the outskirts of the reservation. He walked faster than normal though, because he really wanted to know what was going on with Rupert, and as his dad was the reservation Sherriff, he was the best person to go to for information.

When Stiles finally came up to his house, a hodgepodge of a HUD house and various metal parts his father and he had modified it with, (including a huge metal chimney for when they were working with metals and an antennae for receiving digital information and a few other parts most humans wouldn't recognize,) it was surrounded by military vehicles. It seemed as if they were taking everything out of it and putting it into a semi-truck, the likes of which Stiles recognized from the occasional times when the government brought something big to Toad Suck, like a fey that had been in hiding on the Outside or when one of them disappeared and their house had to be cleaned.

"What's going on?" Stiles asked the nearest warrior… soldier, Stiles reminded himself. Sometimes it sucked to have a history professor who couldn't keep up with human changes in language.

The soldier knew Stiles, he was the one who had given Stiles the Jeep in exchange for one of his golden rings that Stiles had called up from the ground. The soldiers liked it when Stiles called metal from the earth, so Stiles never saw a problem with giving them the metal in exchange for whatever spare mechanical parts they had on them at the time. Their metal had been smote and combined with other metals, and Stiles loved finding out the differences in them by taking them apart and forging them into something new. Gold was sometimes boring, but it was shiny and the soldiers liked it.

"Your dad is getting reassigned," the soldier said sadly. Stiles liked to think that if he wasn't fey, he would be friends with Special Forces Officer Anderson.

"Reassigned?" Stiles asked.

"You should probably go talk to your dad about this, kid," the soldier said. He looked like he was going to cry that Stiles didn't understand what was going on.

Stiles nodded his head. He knew he was young, but he thought he might be old enough to be told things. He walked into the house he and his dad shared, dodging military men carrying boxes and furniture out of the house. "Dad?" he called, his voice echoing in the emptier house, more than normal. The metal sang back to him, hearing his voice and soothing him.

"Stiles?" his dad called. "I'm in the bedroom."

Stiles found his dad looking sadly at some pictures of his family before his mother died. They were standing outside of this house, and his mom had a funny smile on her face as she tried to hold on to Stiles, who was trying to run out of range of the camera. Stiles remembered wanting to touch the camera and see what it was made out of, he remembered the song that the gears made when the photographer took their picture.

"What's going on?"

"We're going away," Sherriff Stilinski said, looking up at Stiles. "There's a problem on another reservation, and they have requested that a neutral party come lead the investigation, and to take over as Sherriff if the investigation goes well. It was suggested that I take this job by the BOA."

The Bureau of Otherkind Affairs had ultimate jurisdiction over the reservations. That was the only thing that Stiles really knew about them. Well, that and some of the elders were upset with them having jurisdiction over them because they were all so young, some of them only fifty or sixty years old, and they thought this made them wise.

"We're moving reservations?" Stiles asked, shocked.

"Yes, son," Sherriff Stilinski said. "We're going to a place called the Beacon Hills Reservation. It's in California."

Beacon Hills, Stiles thought. No wonder Rupert was giving Stiles pointers on werewolves and shapeshifters and humans. That reservation had all of them, and it was the most open reservation in the entire country. Stiles was going somewhere else, and for the first time, the thought terrified him.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles had never seen so many people in one place before. There were thirty-three children all the same age as him in the classroom, and they were all staring at him. Every single one of them. Stiles could feel himself starting to sweat.

"This is… Stiles Stilinski?" the teacher asked him in a very, very slow speech.

"Yes, sir," Stiles swallowed the squeak in his voice.

"Is that really your name?" the teacher asked him.

"No," Stiles said, shocked. Like he was going to give his real name to thirty-three people and a teacher.

The teacher stared at him, as if he was waiting.

"Fey don't give their real names out," one of the girls said. She had long strawberry blond hair, and she was beautiful.

"Why?" the teacher asked, as if he didn't know.

Stiles didn't say a word. He wouldn't have answered a child asking such a stupid question. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and waited for a real question.

"You're from Toad Suck Reservation?" the teacher looked at the paperwork in front of him.

"Yes," Stiles said, even though a lot of other kids laughed at the name.

"Is that a real name?" the teacher asked.

Stiles couldn't believe that he had not heard about Toad Suck. Maybe Rupert had a point about not talking.

"What other kind of Otherkind live on Toad Suck?" the teacher asked Stiles.

"There are only fey," Stiles said. He didn't explain how he was the tenth youngest fey on the reservation, or how it was only the most powerful fey in existence on the reservation, or how his last economics class was taught by a dragon who was also his principal and his metal shop teacher and looked like he was nine or ten years old. He just thought about those things, and kept his mouth shut.

"Well, I'm Coach Finstock, and that's my real name," the coach said, as if there was nothing to fear in giving out a person's real name.

Stiles goggled at the man. Was he a moron?

"So go sit down. There's a free seat next to McCall. McCall!" Finstock yelled. "Wake up!"

The others in the class giggled as a boy raised his head and sleepily blinked at the teacher. "I did the homework last night," he grumbled.

"It was a full moon last night. I seriously doubt it," Finstock said. "Raise your hand so Bilinski here can come sit next to you."

McCall raised his hand, and then he put his head back down on the desk.

Stiles walked softly through the forest of desks to sit down next to the sleeping boy, who smelled a lot like wolf. He tried not to stare, but really, it was the first werewolf he had ever seen. He knew how ferocious they were and how they tried to scent things and Stiles briefly wondered if the boy was going to sniff his crotch or something.

McCall smacked his lips, drooled on his desk a little, and fell into a deeper sleep.

Stiles was disappointed.

The class was simple. The teacher stuck to the subject and didn't make comparisons in economics with other countries and other centuries, he just stuck to basic American economics and summed everything up neatly at the end, when a bell rang and everyone else started moving. Stiles blinked a few times, wondering how to operate in a class that wasn't constantly interrupted by people asking questions about other times and comparing them to what had happened ten or twenty years ago. It was the strangest forty-five minutes of his entire life.

"What class do you have next?" A pretty girl with curly black hair falling down her back asked him.

Their classes were all in a row, Stiles reminded himself, instead of whenever people felt like meeting. He pulled out the paper that listed his classes, wondering if this piece of paper had any special value, and handed it to the girl. He hoped he wouldn't owe her a favor to get it back, because he hadn't memorized it yet.

"You have English with Scott and me," the girl said. "My name is Allison, and that's Scott," she said with a pretty smile that brought out her dimples.

Stiles nodded. She didn't smell like anything, and he wondered why. He leaned in a little closer so that he could smell her, but all he could tell from that observation was that she smelled like human and lots of soaps and a little bit like flowers.

"I'm just a human," she said, her smile getting wider. "Scott is my boyfriend."

"You're dating a werewolf?" Stiles asked her.

"Yup," Allison said. "My parents aren't too thrilled about the whole werewolf thing, but we're supposed to let bygones be bygones, aren't we?"

Stiles was confused, but he nodded his head anyway. Why would anyone simply ignore the past?

Stiles followed a sleepy Scott and his girlfriend to English class, staring when they kissed each other a few times in the middle of the hall. He wondered if they were older, and that was why they were already so involved with each other. "How old are you?" he asked them.

"I'm sixteen," Scot t said. "Allison is seventeen."

"Is everyone sixteen or seventeen?" Stiles asked.

"In our grade, yes," Scott nodded his head. "Isn't that the age people usually are as Juniors?"

Stiles shrugged, not wanting to answer. He wondered what his classmates at his old high school would have said. They always claimed there was so much time, and he wondered what they would think about entire classes of people Stiles' age.

The classes all felt so short, especially after Stiles's 3-5 hour class periods that he was used to, that met twice or three times a week, whenever the teachers felt like showing up. He wondered how anyone got any information, but everyone seemed to understand because they weren't asking any questions. Stiles had a million questions to ask, especially since his teachers all seemed to be incredibly young. Stiles had never had a teacher under the age of four hundred and fifty, and not a single one of his new teachers seemed to have even been one hundred.

The last class of the day was when Stiles felt like he had truly found the most precious thing in the world. There was a classroom, and it was filled with computers.

Not the old Comodore that Stiles had been limited to at his old school, no, these were more like his Tablet. Stiles was shocked when the teacher said he could sit at one by himself, and after he got used to the platform he looked around and was shocked again when he could go to new websites that hadn't been written in C-Dos. It seemed like there was no firewall at all, and he could look at all sorts of webpages.

The teacher must have read his shock at seeing such a marvel, and she asked him what he had been learning at his old school. He explained about the limited computer resources his school had, and she told him to get used to this one and he could start catching up with everyone towards the end of the week.

Stiles was in heaven. No one was getting sick around all this metal, so he didn't have to worry about anyone else in the same room as him. He could concentrate on paying attention to the computer.

The firewall at the school was a complete joke, too. Stiles could look at any website he wanted, and he looked at kittens and politics and porn and fan fiction and statistics and history, but his absolutely favorite thing of all time was Wikipedia. He had never seen so much information in one place before, besides some of his teacher's heads. If he was going to be taught by children in this school, then he might as well take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to him.

He looked up when he noticed everyone else was gathering their things to leave. He figured that the strict schedule was necessary to coordinate so many different people. It would have been impossible for one of them to just send a bird or make a quick phone call or something to tell him that school was starting if there were so many people. And the schedule of course made it simpler for everyone to remember who was supposed to be where and when.

Stiles was surprised that Scott and Allison were waiting for him at the front steps.

"How was your first day?" Allison asked him with that infectious smile.

"Good. Way different than my last school," Stiles said.

"Who's this?" A new boy walked up with his arm around the strawberry haired girl.

"This is the fey," the girl announced. "His name is Stiles."

"Stiles the fairy," the boy snorted.

"Yes," Stiles said, not getting what the boy was laughing about. He figured it was something bad, because Scott punched him.

"This is Jackass," a dark skinned boy said from behind the blond one. "I'm Danny."

"Danny's a fairy, too," Jackass said.

Stiles frowned, taking a sniff. "No he's not," Stiles said. "But y'all are mostly werewolves, aren't you?"

"You can smell it? Like we can? How come you don't smell like flowers, if you're a fairy?" Scott asked.

"Why would I smell like flowers?" Stiles asked.

"Fairies always smell like flowers. When we went on the field trip to the reservation up in Washington, one of those intercultural exchanges, they all smelled like some sort of flower. Except that one who smelled like the ocean and fish. That was weird," Jackass said, "You smell like… lots of different types of metal."

"That's weird, Jackass," Stiles said. He didn't know what else to say.

"My name is Jackson," Jackass said, his eyes narrowing as his friends all laughed.

"Oh, I apologize," Stiles said quickly. He looked at Danny, who had introduced his friend but was now currently bent over laughing. "Why did he call you a fairy? You smell like a wolf."

"Danny's gay," Scott explained.

This made no sense whatsoever to Stiles. It was apparently hilarious to Jackass… Jackson, though.

"You think fairies are gay?" Stiles asked. "I can assure you that not all of them are. My parents were not gay."

Jackson stared at him. "Are you gay?"

"I don't know," Stiles said. "I haven't found my mate. I don't know if my mate is a boy or a girl, so… I can't answer that question yet."

They all stared at Stiles like he was insane. He thought it was a perfectly logical explanation. He went over his words again in his head to make sure that they made sense.

In any case, Scott shrugged his shoulders. "Well," he said, we're hanging out tonight at our Alpha's place. You want to come along?"

Stiles paused. It was the first time he had been invited to go to someone else's house. "Will it bother your Alpha? I have been taught that they are very territorial. I might not be welcome, and I would hate to trespass on my first full day."

"Derek's cool," Scott said, but this was met with a guffaw from Jackass… Jackson.

"No, he really is. He'll be excited to meet you," Allison said, and she really seemed to be such a sweet human girl. Stiles decided that he liked her.

"He might even make a facial expression," the strawberry haired girl said. Stiles wanted to know her name, because she seemed smart. Stiles liked smart, he always had.

"What's your cell number?" Danny asked him. "I'll text you the address and what time everyone is meeting up."

"I don't have a cell number," Stiles said. He knew about cell phones, he had read about them on his tablet, but he never really saw a need for them before.

"You don't have a cell phone?" Jackson asked. Stiles congratulated himself on not calling him Jackass in his head.

"No," Stiles said.

"It's okay. You live down the street from me," Scott said, "I'll stop by your house and pick you up…"

"Fairies can't ride in a car," the strawberry haired girl said.

"I can," Stiles said. "I have my Jeep right there," he pointed to it in the parking lot.

The girl's eyes got really big, which was nice because her eyes were pretty. "Are you a gremlin?"

Stiles tasted the name, "I think that's what they call us," he said.

"Wow," the girl said. "You're really rare, aren't you?"

"It depends on your definition of rare," Stiles said.

"Why isn't your skin green, then?" Jackson asked.

Stiles was confused again. "I'm supposed to look human," he said. "But even when I don't, my skin isn't green."

"You watch too much television, Jackson," the girl huffed, and not knowing her name was starting to irritate Stiles a little. It wasn't like he hadn't met someone who hadn't given out their name before, though.

"Lydia, you know you love me," Jackson said, following her to her car as she flounced away.

"I'll come to your house then, you can follow me up to Derek's tonight," Scott offered.

Stiles nodded, and then walked away from his new… acquaintances? Friends? Was it too early for friendship with these people? He liked them, even though they were very strange.

Stiles got back to his house, pleased to see the military still hadn't unpacked the boxes in his room. They took care of the rooms downstairs, but Stiles's room was still a mess of boxes. He found one box that didn't come with a room, and almost squealed with delight to see it was a brand new computer.

There were no pre-existing firewalls on it when he opened it up.

The first thing he searched for was Toad Suck. He found it on the map, and he looked for a Wikipedia article on it, but there was only a mention that there was a reservation and it was limited to fey. Stiles frowned. No wonder no one knew anything about it. He briefly thought about editing the page, but he figured that was something that would endanger the fey living there so he left it alone.

He unpacked ten of his boxes, feeling pleased with himself when the doorbell rang downstairs. He opened the door to find Scott waiting with a goofy grin on his face.

"You ready to go?" Scott asked him.

"Yes," Stiles answered, grabbing his keys from the rack next to the door. He was surprised when Scott climbed into the Jeep with him.

"Mom wouldn't let me borrow the car tonight, so I'm just going to ride with you. Everyone is already up there. It's movie night," Scott said with a smile and a look of glee on his face.

Stiles nodded. "What movie are we watching?"

"What? Oh, no one really watches the movie. We all really just hang out, throw food at each other, get yelled at by Derek, and I get to see Allison in a 'properly chaperoned environment.'" Scott used finger quotes to indicate that he was repeating what someone else said.

"Is Allison your mate?" Stiles asked.

"Yeah," Scott said with a dreamy look on his face. "You know humans don't have mates like we do?"

"Really?" Stiles asked. "That's strange."

"So, what's a gremlin do?" Scott asked. "Do you have superpowers?"

"What? No, not really. I don't think we do," Stiles said.

"Do you grow metal? Is that why you smell different from the other fey?"

"You can't grow metal," Stiles said. "You can call it, but you can't grow it."

"Call it? Like on the telephone?"

Stiles frowned. He thought for a minute. "Yes, only you don't use a phone."

"That's a superpower," Scott announced. "Like how we can smell and run really fast and hear things really well."

Stiles nodded his head. "Okay," he said. He followed Scott up the steps to a large clapboard house out in the middle of the woods. He briefly wondered if this was when they were going to kill him for his powers, and was trying to explain that once he was gone, his power would leave with him so it would be pointless to harm him.

Stiles was surprised then, when Lydia opened the door and invited them into the house. She dragged Stiles into the living room with some confusion.

"Derek has been freaking out about the fairy's scent," she whispered to Scott. Stiles briefly thought that she thought that he couldn't hear her. "He keeps smelling us and asking us what kind of creature we've gotten ourselves into trouble with this time."

"Does he know that Stiles is coming over tonight?" Scott whispered back.

"I can hear you," a voice called from the living room. Stiles's attention was immediately called to that voice, there were words to describe it, he was sure, but he didn't know them. It felt like it was vibrating on his bones, and his skin felt like he was walking in the middle of an electrical storm. His hair stood on end, and Stiles needed to know where the voice was coming from because it was dangerous to him, Stiles Stilinski, personally.

Stiles walked into a room filled with humans and werewolves, but his eyes were drawn to the man standing in front of the fireplace. His eyes were pale, shifting colors with the way that the light hit them, and his hair was black and it stood up on his head. He had a beautiful face, and Stiles couldn't look away from it to see anything else.

Time must have passed, because he heard Jackass say, "Dude, are they going to stare at each other all night or what?" and Stiles looked away from the man. He had no idea why his body was reacting like that, but he was going to find out as soon as possible. He knew his safety depended on it.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles was distracted by many things at Derek's house, Derek being the one of those main things. There were others: some of his appliances made funny noises when the others were using them and Stiles fought the urge to fix them, there was a low vibration in the bass of Derek's sound system that Stiles knew he could fix, the teenagers Stiles was surrounded with were loud and rambunctious, and the food tasted weird. All of these things made his hands twitch, and he wished that he knew if it was safe to move around and mess with them.

He didn't though; Derek was making him uncomfortable. That unease was making him feel spastic and giving him a headache. He knew he was in danger, but he couldn't figure out why and that was driving him crazy.

He had been good all night, he hadn't talked too much and he hadn't moved from his spot on the couch between Danny and Lydia, and he answered all of their questions with as many non-answers as he could politely get away with. They were easily distracted and Stiles found that when he answered one of their questions with one of his own, they were more than willing to talk about themselves. He didn't think that he shared too much information about the other fey that he had grown up with, but he didn't think that it would hurt to mention that he knew a dryad and an ice giant.

It was at the end of the night that he found he couldn't take it anymore. They were cleaning up their mess, and Derek was using his garbage disposal when the sound of protest it was making grated on Stiles's ears.

"Ugh," he declared. "Move, I can't take it anymore," he pushed Derek aside, and his hand tingled after touching the werewolf, who stared at him after stumbling a little from Stiles's strength in shock and confusion. Stiles opened the cabinet under the sink and touched the disposal, which immediately sang with relief. He caressed the pipe a little bit, felt some of the parts moving, and then it was running with a low song to Stiles's ears. "God, that's so much better," Stiles said, pulling his head out of the cupboard in time to catch everyone staring at him.

They weren't saying anything, just staring at him, and Stiles realized that he might have just made a mistake.

"I'm sorry," Stiles said immediately. "It was hurting, and the metal was protesting, and I couldn't help myself, and I won't come back…"

Derek growled at this announcement as Stiles pulled his red hoodie up around his face.

"No way man, that was too cool," Jackson said, shocked. "What did you do? I've never seen anything like that before."

"I told the metal to move back to where it was supposed to be," Stiles said quietly.

"You can speak to metal? I thought you were just a gremlin?" Lydia asked.

"_Metalzauber_," Derek declared. "You're a _metalzauber_."

"What's that?" Scott asked.

No one else said anything, so Stiles, who had already been uncomfortable for most of the night, and Rupert's words were swirling in his head, so he just started talking. "It's in my blood. You can't have it, even if you kill me. So killing me would be a bad idea, because it would just die with me. It isn't something that I can give to anyone else, and no one can steal it from me. Killing me is not a good idea, it won't get you anything, okay?" Stiles was backing up, towards the front door, and then he turned around and started running.

It turned out that werewolves could run faster than _metalzaubers_, who knew?

Derek had him by the back of his jacket, his big hand gripping the hood with painful force. "No one is going to kill you. Stop panicking."

Stiles's mouth wouldn't stop. "I'm sure that me not panicking would make it easier to kill me…"

"We can't kill you anyway, you're a _metalzauber_," Derek said patiently, his voice low and gentle.

"Oh. Oh yeah," Stiles said, slowly straightening himself and trying to figure out where he left his dignity.

"No wonder you've been so tense all night," Derek said, as his pack slowly formed around them. "Look, you can touch anything metal in my house that you want, okay? We're not going to tell anyone about what you do, are we?" Derek looked out at the rest of his pack, who all nodded even though Stiles could see that they were all confused.

"How… how did you know?" Stiles asked.

"I met a _metalzauber _once, in Washington State," Derek said.

"You know Zee?" Stiles asked, impressed.

"I know Zee," Derek confirmed. "How did you know which one?"

"There's only one in Washington State," Stiles said.

Derek looked shocked. "How many are in California?"

Stiles looked at his feet. "Two, now."

"Wait," Lydia said, "when you said you were rare…"

"Whatever problems y'all are having here," Stiles said, "Must be pretty important, to move my dad and me from Toad Suck."

"You really are from Toad Suck," Derek breathed in. Everyone else looked at him like this was significant. "I thought everyone there was… old…"

"Not anymore, there's a lot more babies, and besides," Stiles said. "I'm sixteen. Really sixteen."

"How old is the next oldest?" Derek asked.

"She's forty-six," Stiles answered.

This apparently was significant. "How old is the oldest?" Scott asked.

"He's my best friend, but he can't remember how old he is," Stiles said. He didn't want to incriminate Rupert in anything, but the guy was really old.

"What does he remember?" Lydia asked fascinated.

"Um… he was a child in King Solomon's court. He has some funny stories about that," Stiles said, trying to remember what Rupert had told him.

"Jesus, King Solomon from the Bible?" Danny asked.

Stiles nodded his head. "King Solomon was a friend to the fey," he shrugged. Everyone knew that, didn't they? Stiles was going to have to figure out what people knew and what they were supposed to know compared with what he took for granted was every day knowledge.

Derek nodded his head. "Okay, let's go back inside the house. It's the night after a full moon, and I don't trust the hunters to not take advantage…"

"Not all hunters," Allison interrupted.

Derek smiled at her, "No, not all hunters," he said and then he led them all back into the house. Stiles thought it was weird that his hand was stuck at the back of his red hoodie, but he decided not to make a big deal out of it.

They spent the rest of the night setting up a board game. Stiles didn't know which one it was, and it ended up not mattering because they never played it anyway, too busy fighting over who was going to play which piece. The boys gossiped and the girls discussed homework, Derek sat back with his hand still on the back of Stiles's hoodie and watched them all like a proud parent.

"How are you the Alpha?" Stiles asked him. "You seem so young." Not that appearance had anything to do with age, but Stiles had been told that humans aged pretty fast.

"It was a mistake," Derek said. "I wasn't supposed to be, not until my dad died and then I would have taken over. Sometimes, it just happens that there is more than one Alpha in a pack. So dad has his pack over on the other side of the reservation, and I have my pack here. Since my pack won't get any bigger for a while, it doesn't cause territorial conflict."

"Was it you or your dad who requested for my dad to move over here?"

"My dad. I'm not messed up in the business between the werewolves, the shifters, and the hunters. We mostly leave each other alone," Derek took a sip of his bottle of beer, his thumb brushing the back of Stiles's neck. It felt good, so Stiles didn't say anything about it.

"What happened that you needed an outsider?" Stiles asked, and he felt it kind of comfortable to lean back on the couch he was sharing with Derek. Their legs touched, but it didn't freak him out anymore. It just felt good.

"I don't know. Like I said, I stay out of it," Derek seemed to realize that he kept brushing his thumb against the back of Stiles's neck. He made a strange face that kind of looked like a cross between shocked and dismayed, and then he pulled his hand back to himself.

Stiles immediately missed the warmth of Derek's hand, but he didn't say anything else. He got up and went to go mess with the blender he heard earlier that night, and after taking it apart he found the cog that had been twisted slightly. He stroked it so that it would fall back into the way it was originally forged, and then he reassembled the blender and tested the motor a few times.

"How did your dad become sheriff of the oldest fey in America?" Derek asked him from the doorway of the kitchen, and Stiles realized that he had been watching him.

"It's hard to kill us," Stiles said.

"So you can be killed?" Derek asked, curious.

"Yes," Stiles said.

"Where is your mother?" Derek asked him.

"She was killed," Stiles said. He picked up some of Derek's knives out of his drawer, resharpening them with his finger.

"How did she die?" Derek asked, his voice soft.

"Ignorance," Stiles said softly, "ignorance and secrets. Secrets that must be kept."

Derek nodded his head. "Okay," he said. Stiles could tell that Derek was going to ask him the same question later, and for some reason it didn't annoy him.

At that point, everyone was packing up to leave. Stiles glanced at the clock, surprised that it was already two o'clock in the morning.

Everyone said goodbye, rubbing their faces against each other and hugging each other tightly. Stiles wasn't exactly comfortable with it, so he tried to stand apart from them while they got their scent all over each other, but he was pulled in and rubbed on and hugged, and it made him feel awkward except when Derek took his turn last. Derek's skin must have magical properties as an Alpha, because when Derek slid his cheek against Stiles's and wrapped his arms around him, it felt good, soothing even. Stiles left the house in a much better mood afterwards.

His dad was sitting at the kitchen table after Stiles had dropped Scott off at his house. Stiles stared at the man sitting amidst piles of paperwork on the kitchen table.

"Did you have fun?" he asked Stiles.

"What? Yes, I did. I've never been around people my own age," Stiles said. "They're very different."

His dad smiled. "I think this was a good idea, coming here. Did you like your present?"

"The computer? Yes, it was very nice. I played with it, and I learned so many things. It made my brain happy."

The sheriff laughed, "Good, good. I'm going to get you a cell phone tomorrow so you can tell me where you are. Were you hanging out with Derek Hale's pack?"

"Yes. They had movie night, but I really don't know what movie was playing," Stiles said, "they were too busy talking and throwing food." At least about that, Scott had not been lying.

"Good. Good, I'm glad to see you getting around to being a normal kid. Zee always said that his son did better with kids his own age. You know he offered to take you in?"

Stiles smiled. "I liked Zee, when he came to meet Rupert."

His dad frowned. "Yes, it was good for him and his son to meet Rupert."

Zee's son was on the East Coast now, going to a fancy college who wanted to show off that they were open to Otherkind and even offered him a minority scholarship. They were a little dismayed when he instead made millions of dollars for them by teaching them how to treat metal correctly because their fake generosity just went to show that Tad deserved to go to that school and they were lucky to get him, and they had written and asked Stiles to come, too. Stiles wasn't sure if he wanted to go to college yet, and besides, he had hundreds of years to pursue that course of action.

Stiles nodded, and then got some things out of the fridge to start baking tomorrow morning.

Sleep that night was hard, as it was every time he talked about his mother that day. It wasn't fair that he didn't get to spend much time with her, most _metalzaubers _lived to be two thousand years old before they got the death sickness, and his mother was only eight hundred and twenty five when she was accidently killed.

The government hadn't told anyone that Rupert was coming, and there was panic when the military showed up with a baby dragon, who of course at that point was a couple tens of thousands of years old. Rupert had felt so bad that he swore he would raise Stiles, who was a baby himself at the time, and protect him with everything he had. It was why they were such great friends, even though Rupert had killed his mother.

He dragged himself out of bed when the sun rose, not terribly tired. He would probably enter a sleep stage in the next seventy or eighty decades; most fey slept for a hundred years and then were awake for three or four hundred, but that first century took a lot of energy to grow and develop, so it came earlier afterwards. His dad's sleep was overdue, but Stiles knew he was putting it off until Stiles was more established in the human world. They could have always gone back to Fairy, he supposed, but the _metalzaubers_ liked living in this reality because there were so many different types of metal, not just gold and silver.

Stiles got up and immediately began baking dark rye bread, his dad's favorite, and he also started eggs and bacon for him. He put some of the older bread in the oven, and soon his kitchen was smelling good.

"Hey, you can cook?" Scott asked, letting himself in through the side door.

Stiles nodded his head. He didn't know if they were close enough yet for the informality, but he liked Scott well enough. Reservation behavior sure didn't change from one reservation to the next, he supposed.

He put a warm plate down in front of Scott, who looked at him as if he were some sort of god. "Am I allowed to eat fairy food?"

"You're not in Fairy," Stiles answered him, placing a plate down in front of his father as soon as he entered the kitchen.

"Hello," Stiles's father greeted Scott. "I'm Sheriff Stilinski."

"I'm Scott McCall. My mom said she met you already," Scott said.

"Your mother is Melissa, the h… human nurse?" the Sherriff asked. Stiles could almost hear him say herbalist, but he caught himself.

"Yes," Scott said. "She said you were very nice and that you were fair-minded."

"No reason not to be fair," the Sheriff said, and then he was clearing his plate. "You should go out and play today, Stiles. I don't want you near the house until late tonight. Why don't you take Scott with you to help you chose a new phone? I've already signed a contract with the dealer out here, so keep it within reason. Don't offer them gold for something fancier, because they already took enough of my paper. Actually, don't call any metals to you, the government mentioned that they don't like it when humans start panicking because they think there's a gold rush on a reservation, okay?"

Stiles nodded. He remembered the old reservations, where humans used to lock up other humans and keep them there by making them poor and sick. Any time there was a hint of something valuable on their land, the other humans would try and take it away from them.

Scott stared at Stiles and his father before eating the last of the breakfast on the table. Stiles took the bread he had been baking and a block of cheese, wrapped them up in some packaging and then took them with him. "Where's the phone dealer?" he asked.

Scott laughed at how matter-of-fact Stiles was. "Did your dad just tell you not to make gold?"

"Call gold." Stiles corrected. "It's in the soil, especially in this state, and he told me not to call it."

"So you can basically pull gold out of the dirt?" Scott asked him.

"Yes," Stiles asked. "It likes to play. It's a whorish metal, it'll come no matter how easy I call it. It's boring though, you can't really do anything with it if you don't mix it with something else. Pure gold feels like playdough in your hands."

"I wouldn't know," Scott said. "You know, you could basically become a bazillionaire with a talent like that."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "You think like a human," he said, and then he went into the store with Scott.

Scott told him about which phone he should get, pointing out features of this one or that one. Stiles settled on the Android, because he liked the thought of being able to write his own software for it, even though he really didn't know any programming languages yet. He would learn, and it would give him something to do when all of his new friends were sleeping.

They climbed back into the Jeep, and Scott directed him around the reservation, which was absolutely huge compared to Toad Suck. They stopped at a convenience store to pick up some 2 litres of Mountain Dew and a few groceries, and then Scott directed him back to Derek's house, where everyone was hanging out.

Stiles made himself at home in Derek's kitchen, pulling out pots and pans as the rest of the pack stared in wonder as he chopped and blended and made them food. They tentatively tasted everything that he put in front of them, but the sandwiches and macaroni salad were gone in a matter of minutes.

"Is this part of fairy magic?" Lydia asked.

"No, this is Stiles magic," Stiles said with a grin, stroking the old non-working dishwasher until it started humming a song for him.

"Can we keep him?" Jackson asked Derek, "Can we keep the fairy, please?"

Derek smiled, and Stiles felt a little bit weird although he still couldn't figure out why. "Yes," Derek said.

And that was how Stiles Stilinski, the _metalzauber_, became part of a werewolf pack in California. All in all, it wasn't too badly of a start to his collections of life stories that everyone else told during history class. Stiles figured that as long as the introduction to this chapter of his life was good, nothing but good could follow. Of course, Stiles had been wrong before, so that didn't make this the first time he made a bad evaluation of a situation.


	4. Chapter 4

When Stiles got comfortable with everyone, he started talking. He talked about everything, it was the first time there had ever been kids his own age around him and they were fascinating. They put up with his questions for weeks before they started giving him a hard time about it, but Stiles liked being given a hard time because that meant they accepted him.

Not only that, but Stiles's dad seemed to really like that an Alpha was taking responsibility for his son's free time. He encouraged the relationship between Stiles and Derek, even going so far as to invite Derek over to their house for regular meals. Stiles's dad and Derek would relax in the living room after a meal while Stiles cleaned up, and he complained that he felt like the housewife. Derek told him to shut up and get him another beer, and Stiles's dad thought it was a great joke. Stiles didn't mind too much because it gave him an excuse to tackle Derek and wrestle him to the floor, and he was starting to like the feel of Derek overpowering him, but he wouldn't ever admit that to anyone.

Soon, there were no manners between any of them at all. Scott was always walking into his house, Lydia and Allison felt no qualms about asking him to fix their jewelry, Jackson was given to wrestle him to the floor any time he talked too much, and Danny kept trying to fix the way that Stiles dressed. Derek watched them all through this with an amused smirk on his face, and Stiles always ended the nights that they spent together curled up somewhere close to him.

Not on him, and not touching him, but near him. Stiles liked the way that he felt around the Alpha, but touching him led to some strange thoughts that Stiles just did not want to have when he was only sixteen years old. After all, his parents didn't meet each other until they were around five hundred years old. Derek was a werewolf, and the oldest werewolf Stiles had ever met was two hundred, although he had read about older ones he had never actually met them. The thought of only getting two hundred years with his mate was horrifying, so Stiles never entertained the notion that Derek might be it.

It wasn't all that was on their minds, though. Stiles's dad still kicked him out of the house for hours at a time because of the investigation, and Stiles had an open invitation from Derek to stay at his place once he found out that Stiles slept in his Jeep sometimes. Derek also had WiFi, and Stiles loved being able to carry his computer around the house to look things up. He was still reading Wikipedia like there was no tomorrow, and most of his new pack said that the rate he retained information was ridiculous.

Whatever was really going on with the political situation at Beacon Hills Reservation didn't seem to matter to Derek or his pack, and Stiles's dad kept him out of it the best he could. There was a problem though, because on the third full moon after Stiles had moved to Beacon Hills, when Stiles was supposed to be locked up in his house, Derek called him.

"They're attacking us!" Derek exclaimed. "Can you get your dad out here? I keep calling dispatch, and they keep putting me on hold before I can say anything. He needs to see this!"

"Derek, my dad is on call tonight…"

"Fine, I'll handle it…" Derek said, but Stiles could hear the sound of wolves singing, surrounding Derek's house through the phone.

"I'll be there, don't leave the house," Stiles told him.

Stiles grabbed a few things out of his closet before he ran down to his Jeep, and he drove up the hills to Derek's house within minutes. His Jeep was possibly going a tiny bit over the speed limit, and possibly a little too fast for a standardized Jeep, but Stiles didn't think that it was reason for Derek to look shocked when he showed up at his door.

"What's going on?" Stiles asked, trying not to stare at Derek's partially transformed face.

"They keep circling my house, sniffing around," Derek sounded agitated, his voice rough enough to vibrate against Stiles's bones again in that way that made him think thoughts that he didn't want to entertain.

Stiles heard the rest of the pack moving restlessly around the house. Jackson had come downstairs, almost in full werewolf form, and he was sniffing in Stiles's direction.

There was almost an invisible signal outside, and all got quiet. Derek and Stiles looked at each other for a long time, and then Stiles took a deep breath and turned his back on Derek.

Stiles stepped out onto the porch, his hands clutching around the objects he had pulled from his closet. They had been a gift from Rupert, and they were very old. "You are trespassing. You will get no other warning from me if you do not leave these premises immediately."

A lone howl answered his announcement, and Derek's ears twitched, and his voice came very close from Stiles's left hand side. "That's not from my dad's pack," he told Stiles.

Another werewolf appeared in front of them. Stiles didn't know this one, and he didn't know its scent. The werewolf crouched to the ground, staring at Stiles, trying to smell what he was. Stiles could see the moment it decided that it simply did not care, and it attacked.

Stiles could feel the control of his glamour that he used to make him appear human slipping as he pulled out the dragon forged sword in one hand and the silver dagger in the other. The dark blue metal of the sword was so dark it almost looked black, and the eyes of the werewolves surrounding him grew as they tried to figure out what Stiles's sword was made of. The werewolf attacking Stiles had thrown himself at him, and he was moving too quickly to avoid the quick thrusts of metal into its body, and it died almost instantly as Stiles pulled both the sword and the dagger out of him.

Derek was shocked, but not for long as they went back to back, the rest of the intruding pack attacked all at once.

Stiles could see Jackson fighting, and he could hear Derek behind him ripping his claws through werewolf hide. Stiles took almost three wolves out before one of them shot at him with a gun. Stupid werewolf, Stiles was a _metalzauber_. He smacked the bullet with his sword, and sent it back to the werewolf. He also danced in front of Derek for a moment to deflect the bullet that another werewolf had shot at him, and this time it was more difficult to control because the bullet didn't have a metal center; it was filled with liquid wolfsbane. He couldn't control where it went when he deflected it, and it fell in the dirt at their feet.

It was too much to assume that Stiles would walk away from this unscathed. One of the werewolves had to know what he was, because before he realized it one of them had taken a stick and jammed it into his thigh muscle. Stiles fell, and Derek let out a howl that was eardrum shattering. The remaining wolves scampered off into the night from where they came, and Derek was kneeling at Stiles's side.

"Are you going to die, is this how you can die?" Derek asked, anxious and scared.

"Rupert," Stiles whimpered, "I need Rupert!"

"Get his dad," Derek commanded Jackson, who was still were'd out even though Stiles could tell that he was trying to change back into a human. "Get the Sheriff!"

"Rupert," Stiles whispered again, and Derek's face twisted into pain to hear Stiles calling the name of a man he didn't know and couldn't get a hold of.

Derek picked Stiles up and carried him into his house, tracking dark red fairy blood all over his carpet. Stiles wanted to laugh, because it would bless the house, but his leg hurt so badly that all he could do was whimper.

"I got him," Jackson growled. "I got the Sheriff," and he handed the phone back over to Derek before he fell back into his wereshape. Scott and Lydia were already in the room, whining over Stiles's shivering body.

"We were attacked," Derek said, "Stiles came and tried to defend us, but they stabbed him through the leg with a branch…"

"Shit," the Sheriff said. "Is he conscious?"

"He is, he's calling for Rupert…"

"Don't let him call Rupert here!" the Sheriff yelled. "The last thing that we need is Rupert on this reservation."

"Is Rupert his boyfriend?" Derek couldn't control the growl that came out of his mouth at that point.

"God I hope not," the Sheriff said, which didn't seem to help Derek's control at all. "Knock him out, if you can. We cannot afford to have Rupert on this rez with everything else…"

"Don't touch my boy!" a young child's voice said from the doorway between Derek's living room and his entry way.

"Shit," the sheriff cussed again. "Don't piss him off, I'll be right there." Then the sheriff hung up on Derek.

Derek turned to see a boy, only nine or ten years old, with a shock of red hair and tilted green eyes. His ears were pointed, and he had freckles splattered across his nose, standing out against his fair skin in a failed attempt to hide how beautiful the boy actually was.

"Rupert," Stiles said, with a smile on his face that did not piss Derek off, at all.

"Boy, what happened?" Rupert stared at the branch still sticking out of Stiles's thigh.

Stiles smiled a little longer, and then he passed out.

Rupert turned and glared at Derek. "His father said you were looking out for him," he chastised the taller man before walking over to Stiles. Derek stared in horror as the tiny child pulled the branch out of Stiles's leg, not even noticing when blood splattered all over his face.

Derek growled, running over to Stiles's side to put pressure on the wound, he knew that there was an important artery that had to have been severed down there. "You're going to make him bleed out… he needs a hospital…"

The boy batted Derek's hands away from Stiles's leg with impatience. "Where a doctor will be unable to cut him because he's a _metalzauber_ and doctors only use metal knives? Good plan, werewolf, what's your backup?" Rupert glared at Derek, and then he spit into the palm of his tiny, pale hand. Only his spit seemed to be made up of fire, and he pressed the fire into Stiles's leg.

Stiles woke up momentarily, just long enough to scream, before he passed back out. Rupert laughed at his reaction, and then spit into his palm again.

"What are you?" Derek asked him.

"Like your little werewolf senses can't tell you that," Rupert scoffed at him. "You just don't want to believe them."

Derek looked behind him to see the rest of his pack huddled in a corner, their eyes wide and staring at the boy sitting next to Stiles with something akin to terror.

"Rupert?" Stiles was awake, but barely.

"Shh… hush now, child," Rupert said, running his hand down Stiles's face.

"What are you doing here?" Stiles asked.

"I told you I would always come when you called," the little boy said, smiling down at Stiles, stroking his face until he fell asleep.

Derek actually had no idea what this child was, but if he had come all the way from Arkansas after Stiles had only whimpered his name, he was a little scared at what kind of power was in the body of this being. He was spitting fire, too, and that was never a good sign when it came to being able to fight something. The child was also looking at Stiles with an expression he had never seen a kid wearing before, and it didn't take Derek long to decide whatever the fuck this being was, he didn't like him. He took the sheriff's advice to not piss the little runt off, and he kept silent.

There was a knock at the door. Lydia changed back long enough to go answer it, and Sheriff Stilinski walked in after her, barely glancing at the werewolves in the corner. "Goddamnit, Rupert," he said as soon as he saw the child leaning over his son. "How am I supposed to explain not only your disappearance from Toad Suck, but your magical appearance here? How are we supposed to let the humans think they are safe when you pull shit like this?"

"You said he would be under protection," Rupert hissed at the sheriff. "This is your protection? Better I change reservations…"

"It was a pack conflict," the sheriff said, "I left him with an Alpha…"

"This boy?" Rupert gestured at Derek. "This is a boy! He might have some power, but he is a boy! How he made Alpha when he's…" Rupert sniffed at him, "only twenty-four years old, it is beyond me. Are the werewolves so weak now that they appoint children as Alphas?"

The irony that this creature barely topped four feet was not lost on Derek, but he was too scared to laugh.

"Everyone is a child compared to you, Rupert," Stilinski said. "He's an adult by human terms."

The child looked like he was going to spit. "I'm taking him back with me," he turned his attention back to Stiles, rubbing his injured thigh like a parent… or a lover. There were obviously no physical rules when it came to personal space between Stiles and this child.

Derek couldn't control himself anymore, he growled at the child when he threatened to take Stiles away from him.

Rupert studied Derek, and then his pale face got paler. "No, oh no," he said, standing in front of Stiles. "You can't… Not my baby…"

"He isn't your baby, Rupert," the sheriff said, as if they had this argument a million times before. "Stiles is almost full grown… whereas you are still a child compared to your kind."

"I will grow up, if that is what it takes," the little boy said. "I will grow up, and I will take this Alpha's place at Stiles side, to keep him from this. Werewolves can only live five hundred years, would you condemn your child to live longer than his mate?"

Stilinski looked shocked, but he wasn't the only one. All of the werewolves looked shocked, not the least Derek. "How…"

"I can smell it," the boy said, but Rupert was growing before their eyes, his body lengthening, his shoulders filling out, the bones of this face becoming more defined. "I won't allow for it…"

"You promised my wife that you would look out for Stiles," the sheriff said softly, but everyone could hear the panic in his voice. "I hated you for killing her, but I would rather have the three hundred years with her than never have had her at all. You can't take that away from Stiles, too."

Rupert froze, staring down at the floor. "Fine," he said in a new voice that was deeper, richer, and he looked up, but not too far because he was almost in an adult's body. "Let's let Stiles choose, then. I'll stay here, and he can choose between his best friend and this dying thing who thinks he's Stiles's mate," Rupert glared at Derek.

Stilinski nodded, "Fine. But you keep your human form, and you don't use your power while you're on this reservation."

Rupert sniffed a little, tugging at the tip of one of his pointed ears. "As long as Stiles isn't dying," he agreed.

"Dying in the sense that everything dies around you, or dying as in immediately?" the sheriff asked.

"You've spent way too much time making deals with fairies," Rupert gave the sheriff a look.

"That's not a promise," the sheriff said.

"I promise not to use my powers unless Stiles is within hours of his death," Rupert said.

The sheriff looked at Derek and his pack. "When making deals with fairies, make sure you are specific and to the point. Don't try to make it fancy. Also, don't ever thank a fairy, that's an acknowledgement you're in their debt. You didn't need those rules for Stiles because he wouldn't take advantage of you, but Rupert… he's old."

"I'm not old," Rupert protested.

"When you can't remember what year you were born in because they _didn't have a modern calendar then_ you're old, Rupert," the sheriff said.

"I'm not even two thousand years old, Stiles," Rupert said, stroking Stiles's cheek as he slept, "and your father is calling me old."

"Why is he so loyal to Stiles?" Derek asked.

"Rupert killed my wife," the sheriff said, without emotion. Fairies were weird like that. "He swore to protect my son."

"I thought that most things couldn't kill your kind?" Derek asked.

"Most things. There are things that can, and that branch wasn't one of them. Stiles would have healed from that eventually. Rupert named you Stiles's mate, so it won't hurt to tell you. That sword he carries, that's a dragon forged weapon. That can kill both Stiles and me. The other thing that can kill Stiles is right there, stroking his face. He's the one that forged Stiles's sword," the sheriff gave a significant look at Derek.

Derek looked back at Rupert, tall and gangly now just like Stiles. "I thought they were all dead," he whispered in shock.

"Rupert is the last of his kind," Stilinski said. "He's half mad with it, just so you know."

"Great," Derek said. "I'm going to be fighting over my mate with a crazy dragon. This should end well."


	5. Chapter 5

So, it wasn't that Stiles was slow or anything, but he was getting the idea that maybe, possibly, Derek and Rupert did not like each other. It wasn't anything overt that led him to this conclusion, it was more like little stuff. Like Rupert coming up with something else for him and Stiles to do instead of going to Derek's house just about every single time that Stiles suggested it. Or maybe Derek avoiding being in the same room as Rupert, and asking Stiles to come to a different part of his house to check on something in such a way that Rupert wasn't invited along with him. Or it could have been the few times that Derek called Stiles up and asked him to do something that would have made it awkward to invite Rupert along.

Stiles's dad seemed to be trying to keep Rupert and Derek apart, as well. He would send Stiles over to Derek's house with a cup of sugar or a newspaper article that the sheriff thought Derek would find interesting, or he would ask Stiles to borrow a book on werewolf lore that Stiles could have sworn that his dad already knew everything about, and then Derek would try and keep Stiles at his house for a little while longer by asking him to watch a movie with him or to help him find something on the Internet. Stiles never minded spending extra time with Derek, he still got that homey, peaceful feeling every time he got to be with him, so he wasn't complaining.

He just wished his old best friend could get along with his new best friend, because he thought they would be lots of fun to play with together.

Stiles's dad was having problems with the investigation. He was trying to negotiate treaties with the three parties, and he had them over for dinners a lot of nights. Stiles was kept firmly out of the loop, he still had no idea what was going on there.

It was getting frustrating for him; he knew there were things going on and no one was telling him anything.

Rupert's change was one of those. It was strange that someone who had looked like he was nine or ten for Stiles's entire life to suddenly be stuck in the body of a teenager. It also sucked that while this body was new to Rupert, he seemed to have an almost feline grace to his movements. He danced around the house a lot, and Stiles was struck with jealousy every time he moved to whatever song was playing on the radio. Also, Rupert had a much better fashion sense than anyone Stiles hung out with. Stiles was just glad that Rupert wasn't going to school with him, because Stiles knew he would instantly be the most popular kid there and he might not want to play with Stiles anymore because of it. But for the life of him, Stiles could not figure out what had made Rupert suddenly grow up overnight.

To add insult to… well, his self-admitted ignorance at this point, Stiles was really not fitting in well at school either. It wasn't just the fact that he never got anyone's jokes, or that he was instantly accepted by the werewolf pack that everyone referred to as 'Derek's Strays,' or that he was fey in a school where everyone associated the race with a creature called 'Tinkerbell,' or that he was smarter than everyone else including most of the teachers… Stiles talked too much and he dressed funny and all of the machines acted weird around him. It wasn't like he could control any of that, although maybe he could do something about the way he dressed. He just got distracted when he had free time and concentrated on other things, like his friends and the Internet.

Stiles was enraptured with the Internet. It took up so much of his time that hours would pass and he wouldn't have a clue. He learned so many things on it, and Rupert would listen to him ramble for hours, just like he always did when Stiles learned something new when they lived in Toad Suck.

Derek was irritated with Stiles when he did this though, and Stiles didn't know how to handle that. Sometimes Stiles would be rambling on and on about something, and Derek would listen for about fifteen minutes before he would get up, leave the room for a few minutes, and then come back with a fishing pole and drag Stiles out to fish. Sometimes, he would just drag Stiles out to his workshop, where he would work on the custom furniture orders that people had picked out from the furniture store Derek had downtown, and Derek would listen to Stiles talk while he worked on furniture. It was really different from the way that Rupert would sit and listen to Stiles talk, staring at Stiles with a fascinated look on his face the entire time.

After a week of that, Derek handed Stiles the hammer that he had used to make some chairs. "Go nail something," he said.

"But I could get splinters," Stiles stuttered. "That would hurt."

"Yes, it would," Derek agreed.

"Getting hurt is bad," Stiles whined.

"No, getting hurt is part of life," Derek corrected him. "Go hammer something."

Stiles picked up the hammer and stared at it. He picked up a nail, and Derek showed him how to hold it with his fingers and tap it in with a few light strokes of the hammer, and then pound it in the rest of the way.

Stiles actually liked it. So he put in a nail into the board right next to it. It was like working with metal, only it was a lot harder to get it in a straight line because the wood wouldn't move like metal, and if you made a mistake you couldn't melt it and start all over, and if you tried to pull it apart that mistake would stare at you for the rest of eternity.

After another week, Derek showed him how to make a box. It was a lot harder than it seemed, because the wood had to be cut, and to cut the wood you had to measure it. Derek said that you had to measure it twice before you cut it, and Stiles didn't really get that but it turned out it was true.

Derek was building cabinets by the time that Stiles had four boards of about the same size hammered together. Derek showed him how to measure out the plywood for the bottom and the top, and he even let Stiles have some hinges so that his box lid could open and close.

Derek showed him how to burn the wood, in a controlled way, so that you could make pictures on it. He had a tool that would darken the wood, and Stiles doodled on his box before he put a big 'D' next to a 'P' on it.

Stiles smiled at the letters, and he showed them to Derek.

"What's the 'D' for?" Derek asked him, smiling at him.

"That's because you showed me how to make the box," Stiles said, smiling back at him just because he had to.

"And what's the 'P' for?"

"That's for my name…" Stiles said, and then he paused. He almost told someone who was not his mate his name. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that he almost told it to Derek, and Stiles felt himself blushing. He grabbed the box and ran back over to the tool, intending to scratch the letter out and turn it into something else, a butterfly or something, but Derek was right behind him and jerked the box out of his hand.

"Stiles," Derek started to say, but Stiles was crying.

"I got a splinter," Stiles said, staring at the drops of blood dripping from the palm of his hand. He wasn't just crying because it actually hurt, he was crying because he couldn't believe that he almost betrayed his future mate by telling someone else his name.

"Stiles," Derek started to say, but Stiles stared up into Derek's face with big fat tears in his eyes, and Derek sighed. He pulled Stiles's hand up to his mouth and bit the splinter out, spitting it out to the side before licking Stiles's tongue with his hand.

Stiles gasped, the feeling of that tongue on his hand was electrical, and the way that Derek stared into his eyes as he did it had Stiles short of breath, choking for air. Derek's tongue slowly moved against Stiles's hand, his eyes unblinking, and then he closed his eyes and took a third swipe, like he was savoring the way Stiles tasted or something.

"I like your initial next to mine," Derek said softly, before he opened his eyes and looked back at Stiles. "Don't change it."

Stiles's heart was beating so fast and so hard it hurt, but Derek pretended like he couldn't hear it and moved away from him, going back to work on the cabinets that were due in a few weeks. He put the box down on the ground where he ended up sitting because his legs wouldn't hold him up anymore, and he just stared at Derek silently as he watched the other man work.

Derek usually worked in a pair of jeans and boots, and he left his shirt off because he would just sweat in it anyway. His muscles moved under his skin as he shifted the pieces of wood around, tightened clamps and adjusted other things that Stiles didn't know the name of yet. Stiles stared as he used an electric nail gun, watching as it shook Derek's body with its kick.

Stiles felt his heart beating, fast and stuttering. It scared him, more than the splinter that was already healing. He wondered what was going on, and he had to think, but he couldn't because Derek was right there and it was hard to think around him right now.

Stiles moved across the shop, wanting to go home. He was almost at the door when Derek spoke up.

"Stiles," Derek said, "You are very intelligent. You understand a lot of things. But the answers that you need, you are not going to find on a computer. There are some answers that can only be discovered by living."

Stiles listened, not just hearing the words out of Derek's mouth. He listened to Derek, and before he left he realized that Derek's heart was beating just as hard as his own was.

There were a lot of things that Stiles ignored, he knew it. There were a lot of questions that he was scared to ask, a lot of ideas that he wanted to pretend weren't there. Derek was only one of them.

Why were the oldest fae breeding again? Why would a dragon swear protection over a _metalzauber_ when those two races had been sworn enemies for millennia? Why was Stiles's dad concerning himself with werewolf and shapeshifter business? Why was Stiles encouraged to attend human schools when most of the other kids from the reservation were made to be content to wait? Why couldn't Stiles bring himself to ask anyone these questions?

Why did his heart beat like that when Derek licked him?

Stiles got home, and for once his dad wasn't surrounded by files and papers. He simply sat at the table, his eyes closed and Stiles recognized that he looked very, very tired.

"Dad," Stiles said, sitting across from his father.

His dad simply pulled out a flask of whiskey, smirking into its contents. "Of all the things the Celts invented, I think that this is my favorite. Water of Life is what they called it. They were great fun when I was a child, really liked their woad…"

"Dad, I have some questions," Stiles started.

"You have always had questions," his dad said, sipping on the alcohol.

"Dad…" Stiles wondered where he should start. "Why was I born?"

The sheriff smirked into his glass. "Oh son, who doesn't ask that question at some time?"

"Dad, my mom was the last female _metalzauber_, wasn't she?" Stiles asked.

"Mmm… no," his dad said.

"But there are no female _metalzaubers_ left in the world, are there?" Stiles asked.

"That's true," Stiles's dad said. "But your mother wasn't a _metalzauber_."

"What? I'm only half?"

"No, not at all, son," his dad sipped at his drink a little more. "You're full blood. The fairy don't have half-breed children. Our genes carry through; either you're full blood or you're not."

"So it doesn't mean that my mate will be a _metalzauber_?" Stiles asked.

"It would be hard, unless you've got a thing for Zee or Tad… I don't know who the other _metalzauber _is, I've just heard rumors about him."

"But that means that whoever I mate with, they're going to die a long time before me," Stiles said, dismayed.

"Not necessarily," Rupert said from the kitchen doorway. "You might mate with someone who is another type of fae."

Stiles nodded. "What if I mate with someone who isn't fae at all?"

"There are ways around it," Stiles's dad said. "There are spells. We are, after all, magic."

Rupert frowned. "I know how to make someone live forever," he said. "If you find someone who isn't fae that you want to be your mate, tell me and I will fix it for you." He said the words like they were distasteful in his mouth, like he was obligated to say them.

Stiles stared at Rupert for a long time. "Do you hate _metalzaubers_?"

Rupert shared a long look with Stiles's father, and then he sat down at the table and moved his hand for another glass. Stiles's dad handed over the whiskey, and Rupert poured himself two finger widths before he sipped at it.

"I spent most of my childhood fighting your kind," Rupert said. "It's part of the reason that I chose to stay in a child's body for so long. I don't particularly like fighting. When I was captured," Rupert said the word 'captured' like it was a huge joke, "and brought to your reservation, I did not expect to see your family. And there was no reason for the American government to warn me; most humans do not bother to learn fairy politics."

Stiles nodded. It wasn't like humans had to interact with fairies, seeing as how they kept them on reservations so that they could pretend that they didn't have to share the world with them.

"I reacted on instinct. Dragon instincts always want us to kill the mates of _metalzaubers_ first, to infuriate them, make them think unclearly, make them careless. Your dad though, after I killed your mother, your dad ran to you, to hold you and protect you, and I had never seen a _metalzauber_ baby before. It hadn't occurred to me that your kind could breed. I stared at you, and you were fearless and beautiful, your eyes were golden and clear, and I knew that I could never harm you. Your dad talked so fast, explained how precious you were, but he didn't have to tell me because I could tell just by looking at you that you were special. So I swore to protect you at all times."

Stiles didn't know all this, but he nodded his head. There were so many questions now, questions on top of questions, and he didn't have all the answers that he wanted. But there were things that he wanted to figure out for himself, so he excused himself and went up to his room, locking the door behind him so that he wouldn't have any company.

He knew that Rupert's answer was a non-answer. It really wasn't a good explanation of why a dragon would protect one of his kind, and he knew there were things that he wasn't being told. Fairies were rarely direct when answering a question, but none of them were capable of lying without severe consequences. The humans seemed to make a joke about "With great power comes great responsibility," but in Faery the saying went more along the lines of "With great power comes great darkness if that power was abused, and here are five hundred rules about what you can and can't and shouldn't and should do in every situation that we can think of and every circumstance that you might encounter."

So Stiles decided to think about something a little simpler. Derek. It was possible that Derek was his mate, and if that was so then he was going to have to move fast because Derek wasn't going to live very long. He only had a couple hundred years, unless he bargained a favor from Rupert to make him live longer. He didn't want to think about the price that he would have to pay to get that favor from Rupert, and he suddenly wished that he could deal in paper money like the humans did in order to win favors. Rupert was not going to give him anything for paper, Stiles knew that.

It was possible that he just liked Derek. Fairies were known to have infatuations with mortals, who glowed brightly because their lives were so short. Stiles had been warned about that before they left the reservation, that most of the people he would see from now on would have a very bright aspect to them. It was hard to describe, but the shorter a person's lifespan the more energy they seemed to put off.

And Derek was bright. Derek's energy filled Stiles with something wonderful and terrible all at the same time. Stiles wanted more of it, wanted to roll in that energy and claim part of it for himself. Derek's energy was calming and there were hints of darkness, something that seemed to make Stiles respond in lots of different ways.

And as he thought of Derek's tongue sliding against his skin, the way that Derek had stared into his eyes as he was licking him, the way that Derek's long eyelashes had fluttered against his high cheekbones for that last, long lick, Stiles's body responded in a very physical way.

Maybe thinking about Derek wasn't any simpler than thinking about fairy politics.


	6. Chapter 6

It was in history class when the teacher finally asked Stiles to take over.

"There are different types of fairies?" one of the kids asked.

The teacher just looked at Stiles, and Stiles could see not only curiosity but a deep, deep tiredness from children asking questions he just didn't know the answer to.

"Sure," Stiles said, "there are different types of shapeshifters, aren't there? Different races of human?"

"I thought you were all just like Tinkerbell," one of the kids said.

"I'm not a pixie," Stiles stated.

"What kinds of fairy are there, then?"

"Well, you got your basic types: brownies, pouka, elves, gnomes, gremlins, and then you've got your different… political affiliations: The Seelie and the Unseelie…"

"Your political affiliations?" a girl asked. "Does that make a fairy different?"

"Yes," Stiles said. "I'm of the Seelie Court. We believe in keeping balance, nurturing magic in humans and fairy alike, encouraging growth of magic and of the elements. Then you've got your Unseelie, who seek power and destruction, they walk with Death and love nothing more than to kill every creature that is not Unseelie."

"They wouldn't kill humans," one of the teenagers in the room scoffed.

"Of course not," Stiles said. "We have them blocked into Fairy. They cannot escape. We won our last war with them, and so they owe us ten thousand years of servitude."

"My dad said you and your dad were some of the most powerful fairy in existence," one of the more quiet girls spoke up from the back.

Stiles looked at her. "Tell your dad thanks for the compliment," Stiles said.

"How powerful can a fairy actually be?" the scoffing boy asked.

The quiet girl, Stiles thought her name was Erica, spoke up. "My dad said you were a metal spirit."

Stiles looked at her some more. "Your dad knows the old tales."

"My dad said that you were one of the most powerful fey," Erica said.

"If you're so powerful," the boy said, "Show us something."

The rest of the class was staring at Stiles, waiting with either hope or scorn in their eyes.

"Stiles has nothing to prove to you," Lydia said. "I've seen him fight, and…"

"Shut up, dog," the boy said.

Jackson growled at the back of class, starting to stand up out of his seat.

"No," Stiles said, "Wait," he held his hand out, reaching for something. "All magic comes with a price. You will owe me for this favor." Three aluminum cans flew from the recycle bin into Stiles's outstretched hand. Stiles instantly smashed them into a tiny ball, which he held between his clasped hands. He blew into his hands, molding the metal, imagining his work before he let it go: a tiny mechanical bee, flapping thin metallic wings flew out towards the boy who stared with an open mouth.

Before the bee could land on the boy, it was shot out of the air with a tiny ball of flame. It fell, smoking, to the tiled floor in the classroom. "Stiles," Rupert shouted, leaning against the door of the classroom, "We do not perform for the amusement of children."

The mocking boy started to scoff at Rupert, but Stiles could see his brain working out that Rupert had just spit fire across a classroom with frightening accuracy. "I just wanted to know!" he shouted, looking a little nervous.

"If you wanted to know, you should have listened to the _stories_ your parents are telling you. I know since Stiles's arrival, your parents should have been warning you ever y night before you sleep about tempting the fey," Rupert said, pausing to glare at the teacher.

"Son, why aren't you in class?" the teacher fumbled for a response.

"I have already been to school," Rupert said, "My teacher's name was Sun Tzu. Perhaps you have heard of him? And I know that before Stiles attended here there was a mandatory teacher conference where you were instructed to _never_ judge a fey by his appearance. Also, you will not see Stiles for the rest of the week, because after this childish stunt there are some things that he apparently needs to learn."

"He can't be all that powerful anyway," the boy continued, "if all he can do is make a bee…"

Rupert glared at the boy. "He only creates things because he is Seelie. It is unwise to tempt a fey, especially one of Stiles's power. I have seen one of Stiles's race choose, instead of creating, to draw the iron out of a human's blood, killing him instantly, and that was a weak member of Stiles's race. Do not ever think that you would be able to beat a fey, especially a metal spirit like Stiles. You," Rupert turned back to the teacher, "You should have taught your children better."

The teacher was slightly panicked looking, but Stiles came forward. "Come on Rupert, if you're here to fetch me then let's go. Stop scaring them."

"They should learn some respect," Rupert spat out.

"Yes, I'm sure they have. Look, I'm not going to hurt anyone," Stiles said, looking back at the boy whose face was pale and slightly green. "I'm sorry for using magic, and I have no plans to ever do so again within the school. I hope y'all have a nice rest of the week, and I'll see everyone on Monday."

The class stared as Stiles gathered up his things, and then he dragged Rupert out of the classroom.

"There is a reason why you aren't allowed to attend school with me, Rupert," Stiles said.

"They should fear you. Humans used to fear your kind…"

"Fearing me will not gain me friends, Rupert, and I thought that was part of the point of going to school in the first place," Stiles glared at his best friend.

Rupert pouted, and Stiles pushed him into his Jeep. They drove all the way home, where Stiles's dad was already waiting for them with Derek.

Stiles took a deep breath before getting out of the Jeep. "How much trouble do you think I'm in?"

Rupert looked at his dad and Derek on the porch. "Um… I might have been sent to school to pick you up. They might not know about the little… incident that we just had. So maybe you might not want to talk about it until this part is over?"

"What part?" Stiles asked.

"You'll see," Rupert said, getting out of the Jeep.

"Stiles, I'm glad that you're here," his dad called from across the front yard. "You're going on a road trip with Derek, up to Washington so that you can spend some time with Zee."

If Stiles gave his dad a weird look, it was mostly because the man sounded like one of those Children's television hosts who sounded like they had taken way too many hits of meth. Derek looked like he was uncomfortable with Stiles's reaction, which was a cross between annoyance and anger.

"I'm going, too," Rupert announced.

"No, you're staying here with me. Derek will work fine as a chaperone for Stiles, and he can look out for him just fine. I'm paying for them to stay in a hotel room, too. And it has a pool. So you can make use of that, if you wanted. I can have the hotel deliver food to your room, if you want…"

Stiles was getting the feeling that his dad was trying to set him up on a date with Derek, but that would be crazy talk if he was, because there was no way that his dad would be trying to get him together with someone who wasn't his mate, would he?

"Look, maybe Rupert should go with him," Derek started to say.

"No, Stiles needs someone who looks older, and I need Rupert with me," the sheriff said. "So go upstairs and pack a bag, Stiles. Derek said y'all could take his car."

Stiles did as his father said and packed a bag, which mysteriously had condoms in it already. Stiles panicked, looked around the room to find a place to hide them, but Rupert interrupted him. "Be careful," he said. "If you need me, you can just call my name. You know I'll hear you."

"I know," Stiles said, shoving clothing on top of the things he wanted to hide. How was he going to get rid of them without anyone finding out?

"Don't do anything you're uncomfortable with," Rupert said. "Saying no isn't a sign that you're scared or weak, and you shouldn't feel like you have to do anything you don't want to."

"What are you talking about?" Stiles tried for stupid and naïve, all the while panicking about the condoms. He shoved some socks and underwear on top of his clothing, and then he shoved his laptop into the bag with the charger on top of all of that. Oh God, what if the condoms fell out while they were in the hotel room? How would he explain that to Derek?

Not that he didn't want to talk about it with Derek, he realized in dismay. Talking about condoms with Derek just seemed… really sexy to Stiles. Like it was forbidden or something, and that thought…

"Are you even listening to me?" Rupert asked him.

"What? Yes, yeah, I'm listening. 'Just say no, don't talk to strangers, chew my food one hundred times before I swallow…"

"Worthless, talking to you is worthless!" Rupert threw his hands up at the sky and fell over backwards on Stiles's bed.

Of course, Derek took that opportunity to stick his head in Stiles's room, and he glared at Rupert sprawled on Stiles's bed. "You ready to go, Stiles?" he asked, and Stiles heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach when he heard that Derek's voice had dropped almost an octave when he said that.

"Yeah," Stiles said, pulling his hoodie up around his ears so that Derek couldn't see how red they were after he was thinking about Derek and condoms. "Yeah, let's go."

"Remember what I said!" Rupert called after them.

Derek waited until they got into the car. "What did he say?"

"I don't know, I wasn't listening," Stiles said. "I mean, I know I should, Rupert's basically my mom…"

"You think of Rupert as your mom?" Derek asked him, looking over to stare at him even though his eyes should have been on the road.

"Yeah, I mean, I know he's a guy and my best friend and he looks the same age as me, but he's been my mom for like, my whole life."

Derek was smiling at that, and Stiles had no idea why. He didn't particularly care, either, because he really liked it when Derek smiled. No matter what the reason was, it just made him feel right.

Stiles told Derek about Rupert coming to school and embarrassing him in front of the entire class, just like a mom would, and Derek laughed at the story. Honest to gods laughed, and Stiles felt proud of himself for getting a reaction like that out of Derek. He wished he had been embarrassed more so that Derek would laugh like that again, but he couldn't think of a time when it had been that bad.

The trip turned out to be a lot of fun. They had a couple of rest stops, and it was nice for Stiles to take a little nap and wake up with Derek right next to him. He felt safe that way, and he was past the point of questioning it.

They arrived in the Tri-Cities about ten o'clock that night, and Stiles checked in while Derek parked the car. He got to the room just in time for Derek to carry the bags to the door, and they opened the door.

"Um… Derek," Stiles said, "I think there was a mistake. There's only one bed."

Derek blushed, which made Stiles blush, and they looked anywhere but at each other. "I'll go see about getting a cot put in here or something," Derek stammered, and he turned around and left the room pretty quickly.

Stiles called his dad, "Dad," he hissed into the phone, "You rented us a room with one bed!"

"Oh," Stiles's dad said, "I did?"

"Dad!" Stiles shouted into the phone.

"Just try not to kick him in your sleep, okay?" the sheriff was laughing, laughing into the phone before he hung up on Stiles and wouldn't pick up when Stiles called him again and again.

"Apparently," Derek said, still not looking at Stiles, "They're out of cots and the hotel is booked up for the night. The desk clerk told me I was more than welcome to share her bed, if you're that uncomfortable…"

"Stupid desk clerks," Stiles muttered. "No, we'll just…" Stiles made a useless gesture at the bed, "I can stay on my side."

Derek nodded, and then he laughed. "It's really not that big of a deal."

"Yeah, I was just overreacting," Stiles agreed, wishing that was all it was, and thinking it wasn't a lie because it was what Derek truly thought. Derek would never have those thoughts, Stiles wasn't even on Derek's radar like that. Obviously, not if he didn't think that sharing a bed with Stiles wasn't that big of a deal.

They had dinner, delivered by a pizza guy and ate it while watching baseball on television. Stiles didn't really know a lot about the game, but Derek was obsessed and could critique everything that the players were doing and soon Stiles really loved watching it to. Or maybe he just really loved watching Derek love on some baseball, because his face got really animated when there was a play. Stiles learned some very important things about baseball, like the Twins were the best team ever, and that anyone who said otherwise obviously had something very wrong with them, and that one should never, ever underestimate a southpaw at the bat. Stiles wasn't sure what all that meant, but he believed it because Derek believed it. He'd look it up on the Internet tomorrow.

Stiles felt his eyelids drooping towards the bottom of the ninth, when it was obvious that the Twins were winning anyway, and he felt Derek get off the bed and kind of heard him getting into the shower. Stiles was spread all over the bed by the time Derek got out, and he was vaguely aware of an Infomercial on the TV when Derek switched it off and then pulled the covers around Stiles and himself. Stiles immediately snuggled into Derek's warmth and fell into a deep sleep, safe because Derek's arm was around him and his head was on Derek's chest.

Waking up the next morning was a lesson in humiliation, to say the least. Stiles had drooled and he didn't know if he should use his hand to wipe the spit off of Derek's chest or if he should just pretend that it wasn't there, so he cheated and rubbed his cheek in it quickly before slipping out of bed to take a shower. It was gross, but hopefully it would dry quicker that way and Derek wouldn't ever know.

Of course, Stiles remembered that Derek was a freakin' werewolf and could probably smell Stiles's nasty morning breath drool all over his chest, but Stiles was in the shower at that point and Derek probably wouldn't come in while he was naked to kill him. Derek would wait until Stiles was dressed, wouldn't he? Didn't civilized people wait to kill someone until they at least had pants on?

In any case, Stiles decided to man up and walk out in his clothing, only to find Derek doing push-ups on the hotel's floor. Shirtless. With the muscles thing. If Stiles hadn't already lusted after Derek for little things before this, then that would have probably pulled it off nicely.

Stiles figured he could act cool around Derek though, so he rummaged through his bag, carefully avoiding the condoms at the bottom of it, and pulled out his toothbrush and toothpaste and casually walked over to the sink like he didn't have the biggest erection he had ever had in his entire life hidden in his pants. Yeah, he could fake it with the best, he decided, staring at himself in the mirror.

"Thanks for the drool," Derek said, walking up behind Stiles with his own toothbrush. He stole some of Stiles's toothpaste, and glared at him while they brushed their teeth together.

"Yeah, um… sorry about that," Stiles said.

Derek smirked, and then they spit out their toothpaste and fought a little to rinse out their brushes.

"To Zee's place, then?" Stiles asked, trying to act like anything that had just happened this morning wasn't a big deal or at all embarrassing.

"Sure," Derek shrugged.

They got into Derek's car and drove a little bit, stopping to get doughnuts and coffee and orange juice. It wasn't a very large area, despite it being called the Tri-Cities, so it wasn't hard to find Zee's garage.

They got out of the car and walked to the dirty office, where a couple of Hispanic kids were doing office duty. "Hey," Derek greeted them. "Is Zee here?"

"No," the boy at the desk told him. "Mr. Zee doesn't own this garage anymore."

"Who does?" Derek asked him, confused.

"What are you doing in this territory?" a woman from the doorway to the garage asked, wiping greasy fingers on an even greasier towel.

"I'm just looking for Zee," Derek said, hands in the air.

"Does the Alpha know that there's a strange werewolf here?" the woman asked. She was dark skinned and black haired, but her bones were completely Caucasian. Stiles could tell she smelled not human, and he was instantly on alert.

"I've never announced my presence to the Alpha here before," Derek said. "If you could give me his number, I'll amend that immediately. Although, it's not often that an Alpha lets a coyote run in his territory…"

"Special arrangement," the woman said. "I'm Mercy."

"Derek. Derek Hale," Derek took her hand and shook it. "We're just in town because my friend Stiles wants to talk to Zee."

Mercy looked at Stiles, assessing. "You're like Zee," she said, a little surprised.

"Um… yes?" Stiles said, hating that his voice cracked.

"Here," Mercy said, leaning over her desk to write on a notepad. "This is Adam's number, he's the Alpha here, and this is Zee's number. You'd better call him quick because Adam's wolves are all over town."

"They don't live on a reservation?" Stiles asked.

"It's not mandatory, and Adam is The Marrok's second."

"Stiles isn't going to know what that is," Derek said. "He grew up on Toad Suck."

Mercy's eyes got big. "You're Stilinski?"

"I'm his son," Stiles said.

"No, you're Stilinski," Mercy breathed. "I'll call Zee myself, if you want to go and talk to Adam. Tell Adam to call me, and I'll explain the situation if he gives you a hard time."

Derek nodded, staring at Mercy for a minute. "You're the Marrok's coyote?"

"I'm my own," Mercy snapped.

"Yes, yes of course," Derek didn't fight with her. He waved the paper at her. "We'll be out of your hair."

Mercy nodded, but she stared at Stiles as they left the garage.

"What was that about?" Stiles asked Derek.

"Who knows?" Derek said, but Stiles kind of got the feeling that Derek might know just a little more than he was saying.


	7. Chapter 7

Derek barely said hello to Zee before turning around to leave for a meeting with Adam. That was okay with Stiles, because there were a lot of things he wanted to talk to Zee about, and some of them would have been embarrassing with Derek around.

Zee looked like an old man, balding with long white hair and wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a tank top. His big belly looked strange on his thin body, but Zee thought it was fun to look that way and who was Stiles to tell him he should come up with a better glamour? He'd seen Zee without his glamour anyway, and he was very intimidating that way, so maybe Zee just wanted to look like an old hippie because it made people more comfortable.

Zee had a bottle of whiskey, and he sat on the front porch with Stiles. "So your dad thought it would be a good idea to come talk to me? You must have found out something that you shouldn't have."

Stiles shrugged, sipping on some sweet tea that Zee had given him. No one made it right in California, so he appreciated that Zee would have realized that he missed it. "I don't know. I think that he's trying to keep me out of whatever treaty he's setting up with the folks at Beacon Hills. He sends me away a lot."

"That Alpha that dropped you off have anything to do with that decision?" Zee looked at the place where Derek's Camaro had been sitting.

"I don't even know," Stiles said. "That woman at the garage, Mercy?"

"Mercedes, my VW mechanic," Zee sighed the name like a parent who had dealt with a sleepy toddler in the middle of a store, and that her name wasn't a joke in itself. "She's a shifter."

"Yeah, she said my name like she knew who I was. Why is that?"

"You haven't figured out how famous you are?" Zee laughed. "For such a bright boy, I'm shocked that you haven't figured it out yet."

"Sorry, I just figured everyone knew who I was on Toad Suck because, well, there's like less than two hundred people on Toad Suck. And then I figured everyone knew who I was in Beacon Hills because my dad got called in special to arbitrate something-or-other…"

"Stiles, people know you because you represent something important," Zee said. "It has nothing to do with where you grew up, or who your dad is. You, especially to those in the know, are symbolic of something as well as a portent."

"What?" Stiles asked. "What the heck does that mean?"

"What do you know about your mother?"

"Well, I just found out that she wasn't a _metalzauber_," Stiles said. "Besides that, she was my mom. Dad said she loved me a lot and that she was a very powerful being, and that she died. He won't say much else about her."

"That's too bad," Zee said. "Why don't you tell me where babies come from?"

"What?" Stiles almost shouted, "Everyone knows that. Love and magic…"

"What about human babies? Where do they come from?"

"Well, most humans don't have magic," Stiles tried to figure it out.

"Humans reproduce with sex. Don't ask me how, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but that's the way they do it. Tell me how dragons reproduce."

"They just need magic," Stiles said, slowly.

"Magic and wisdom," Zee nodded his head. "That's why Rupert hasn't had any children. He's old, but he is not wise. He runs too much, when he needs to sit and learn. So tell me, what is your mother?"

Stiles thought for a while. "I don't know, I never met her parents."

"You never will," Zee said. "Your mother was made from magic."

"My mother was a dragon?"

"No," Zee said, "Although Rupert might have seen it that way, after he killed her. He felt remorse, for the first time in his entire life, when he took your mother's life. He had killed someone who could have understood what he was, who could have sympathized with being the only creature left made from pure magic."

"I completely don't understand where you're going with this, Zee," Stiles said.

"How many children were on Toad Suck when you left, Stiles?" Zee asked Stiles as if hadn't heard him at all.

"There were nine younger than me," Stiles said.

"How often do the Fey choose to have children?" Zee asked him.

"It isn't often," Stiles said. "It takes a lot of magic to have children. I couldn't do it," Stiles evaluated himself.

"Why do you think there were so many children, if there were less than two hundred Fey on Toad Suck?"

Stiles shrugged his shoulders. "I have no idea."

"So let me ask you this," Zee said, "What keeps the Unseelie in Faery?"

"The Seal," Stiles said. "They were Sealed in by Merlin the Magician, after the War of Dragons," Stiles at least knew that answer.

"What was the Seal made out of?" Zee asked Stiles.

"Magic," Stiles answered.

"So," Zee said, finally looking at Stiles. "What work of magic recently died, spurring some of the most powerful Fey in the world to have children at a startling rate despite the cost to themselves, and as a by-product had a Dragon swearing allegiance to the son of a race that his kind had gone to war with, annihilating all except himself?"

"My mother was the Seal?" Stiles asked. He could feel his heart beating fast, and he suddenly wanted Derek close to him for comfort purposes.

"Your mother was the Seal," Zee said. "Your father and your mother loved each other so much that they wanted to have you, even though it shook her power in keeping the Unseelie out of this reality, and you are now the only thing standing between our world and them."

Stiles sat back in his seat, gripping the glass that held his sweet tea. "Zee…"

"The Seal will not hold, we are surprised the Seal held this long," Zee said. "Your mother's grace ends, but none of us know when or how. We expected an attack as soon as you were born, and then we expected an attack when your mother was killed. No one knows what will break the Seal because Merlin never wrote anything down about it, and he didn't even tell his teacher Rupert what he put into it. It might be your birthday, it might be when you make love for the first time, it might be the first time you face an Unseelie that broke out. It is not your fault, and no one will ever hold whatever you do against you, because your very existence at this point is giving us time to prepare for a war the likes of which this reality has not seen for a very, very long time."

Stiles stared at Zee. He wondered how he was supposed to respond to this because he really had no idea. "You think that it could come at any time?"

"I think that you should concentrate on seducing that young man who looked at you like you were ice cream on a hot day," Zee said. "Chocolate ice cream."

"You think…"

"If this meeting he has with Adam goes well, the Marrok might back us in this war, if you were to seduce him."

"Who is the Marrok? And you want me to seduce Derek for political reasons?"

"The Marrok is the Alpha of North America," Zee told Stiles. "No matter how powerful a werewolf, they all answer to the Marrok. The Marrok came out West with Lewis and Clark, and he married into a tribe out here and stayed. When everyone else agreed to go to the reservations, The Marrok said he refused and it isn't like the American government could actually force any of us to do something like that without our full consent. Most of us chose to do it so that the government would think that they were in control, but after the treatment that his wife's people received on the Indian Reservations, The Marrok wasn't even going to act like he was compliant with this idea. It would have been easier for us all if he had, though.

"The Marrok came from the same place that Merlin was born, albeit a few centuries later. He is old and powerful, and he appointed Adam Hauptman as his second. Derek might only be going to inform the Second that he is visiting his territory, but more might come of it if he is respectful and makes a good impression. The werewolves would be powerful allies against the Unseelie. But even if he doesn't, Stiles, you should still seduce him. Passion and love are not things to be ignored without good reason, and if that isn't good enough of an argument on its own, then politics will work. Derek Hale comes from an old family, one of the few who still give birth to werewolf children. His family is well respected, by most werewolves, and many would not take much persuading to follow him into war, especially if his pack boasts both a _metalzauber_ and a dragon."

"What is the Marrok's name?" Stiles asked, not really wanting to discuss seduction strategies or possibilities with Zee.

"Bran. Ironic, isn't it, that he is named _Raven_ in the old tongue?"

"And Mercy is the Marrok's?" Stiles asked.

"Mercy's father was a shapeshifter, a coyote. Not a skinwalker, you know those are two terribly different things, don't you?"

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Of course I know that."

"Mercy's mother didn't know what to do with a coyote in her crib, but she knew someone who knew someone, and she drove Mercy to the Marrok's reservation and dropped her off at his house. He was willing to take her in, even though everyone knows that werewolves do not get along with shapeshifters. That's something else you should keep in mind, Stiles. When you go to war, there will be parents who die. But there are others who will raise their children with pride, others who have large enough hearts that they will not let war orphans on their own."

"Zee, are you inferring that _I_ am going to war, and others will follow me?" Stiles asked, but he kind of already knew the answer.

"Who else would the bickering Seelie Court choose to follow? Our kind is especially talented at war, it is in our blood. Sure, for the most part, our kind would rather be stuck in a forge or at a library, but once committed, our kind make frightening generals. That's why it is our kind who won the Dragon Wars, our kind that your dragon hates most."

"Why me? Why not Tad, your son?"

"Tad has already said he will help you. But Stiles, Tad is not the son of the Seal. Tad is not the one who held off the Unseelie for sixteen years."

"How does anyone know that it was me, and not something else that's held them off?"

"Because Stiles, those who can see magic can tell where it comes from."

"But doesn't that make me a target?" Stiles wanted to know.

"I'm sure you've never been attacked for no good reason?" Zee asked with a quirked eyebrow, and Stiles remembered the night when he ran to Derek's.

"There was a time that the werewolves attacked Derek's house, and we couldn't figure out why," Stiles whispered.

"The Unseelie test their bonds," Zee said, thinking out loud.

"Hm," Stiles said. At that time though, Derek pulled up in his Camaro, and Stiles said his good-byes to Zee. It felt like they had only spent a few minutes together, but when he glanced at his phone he was surprised to see that it had actually been about three hours.

"Keep in mind what I said about the whole…" Zee started to say, looking at Derek.

"Yeah, okay I will," Stiles said, not wanting Zee to say anything where Derek could hear him. He was already embarrassed by the whole thing, and Stiles wasn't in the mood to explain that particular facet of Fey culture, having multiple reasons for doing something like choosing a mate instead of just one like on TV. If Stiles had learned anything from watching TV, it was that humans hated having multiple reasons for things, instead insisting on simply pure motivations.

Not that Stiles would have a problem with taking Derek as a mate even if there wasn't a political motivation. Stiles would have done it in spite of all that, but he just knew that people had problems with multiple reasons. Stiles decided then and there, that if Derek didn't bring it up, he would never put Derek under that pressure.

"How was your talk with Adam?" Stiles asked, settling into the seat of the Camaro. It was actually kind of comfy.

Derek growled.

"That good, huh?" Stiles asked. His heart sank a little. Derek might have still fought by his side just because Stiles was Pack, but it would have been nice to have all the North American werewolves as allies, too.

"Adam welcomed me into his territory," Derek said. He was quiet for a while.

"Sounds like there's a 'but' in that statement," Stiles said.

"He was mostly interested in hearing about you," Derek spat out.

"Okay," Stiles said after a moment.

"In particular, our relationship," Derek continued, pulling into a diner. He got out of the car, and Stiles followed him closely.

"What about our relationship?" Stiles wanted to know.

"He wanted to know if we were _in_ a relationship," Derek said.

"Well, we're friends. You're my best friend, since I moved to Beacon Hills," Stiles said.

Derek looked at him, a little surprised. "Really?"

Stiles nodded. "Didn't you know?"

"No," Derek said. "I told him we were friends and that you were part of my Pack."

"Was he mad that you made a _metalzauber_ part of your pack?" Stiles asked.

"No, he was actually kind of happy about that," Derek said. He ordered for both him and Stiles, and Stiles loved the fact that Derek knew what he wanted to eat without telling him.

"So why are you mad?" Stiles asked.

"He hinted, rather strongly, that you and I should have a… more intimate relationship," Derek said, and Stiles almost made a stupid noise when Derek blushed, busying himself with drinking water.

"Oh," Stiles said, playing with the paper from his straw wrapper. "Well, if it makes you feel better, Zee said the same thing to me."

Derek looked up at him. "What?"

"My dad, too," Stiles said. "Rupert doesn't seem to be a fan of the idea."

"Your dad?" Derek asked.

Stiles nodded.

"He isn't weirded out by the whole age thing?" Derek asked.

"What age thing?" Stiles wanted to know.

"I'm eight years older than you?" Derek asked.

"We're the same age, I mean, we're actually pretty close in age. When you're within a hundred years of someone, most Fey consider that the same age…" Stiles said, not looking up at Derek.

Derek was staring at him, Stiles could tell without even looking.

"I guess that's a pretty significant age gap with humans," Stiles said, wondering why he felt like he was going to cry all of a sudden.

"Are you upset?" Derek asked, reaching across the table to pull at Stiles's hand. "Did Zee say something that upset you?"

"No," Stiles said, "There was just a lot to take in…" he wiped at his eyes, wishing that he wasn't so emotional all of a sudden. "There was just… a lot…"

It was a lot, and discovering the fact that Derek thought of him as too young to take as a mate was somehow worse than all of that. He thought that he could handle it if Derek was there by his side, but the idea of having to face all of this on his own was just scary. Derek was his friend, Stiles reminded himself, and he didn't seem like he was going to go away just because he didn't find Stiles attractive in that way. If Stiles waited, maybe Derek would see him as a man soon, and maybe even a lover later.

"Stiles, don't cry," Derek said. He got up and said something to the waitress, who nodded her head. She looked past Derek's shoulder to give Stiles a sympathetic glance, and she turned and went back to the kitchen.

Stiles couldn't stand sympathy from strangers, and he pulled his hoodie up over his head so that no one could see him crying. Derek took the food that the cook had put into a plastic bag, and he ushered Stiles out of the diner and back into his car. He didn't say anything on the way back to the hotel, and he made Stiles eat while he ran him a bath.

It was too much. Derek took such good care of him, and Stiles knew that they would have been fantastic lovers if only Derek would give him a chance, but Stiles couldn't get over the fact that Derek saw him as a child.

Stiles sat in the bath after crying his eyes out behind the closed door, and he laughed at himself. Here he was, facing a war between the Seelie and the Unseelie, with most of the Fey pitting him as their general, and he was crying like a little kid because one man didn't seem to be interested in him in that way. How foolish was he? Stiles tried to convince himself that this was nothing to be heartbroken over, besides, he never let himself think about Derek in that way before, so he shouldn't act like this was the end of the world.

Stiles got out of the tub, and Derek made sure that he ate his food. He wasn't very hungry at all.

"What did Zee say to you?" Derek asked when Stiles was finished.

"There's going to be a war," Stiles blurted out.

"We all know that," Derek said, pulling Stiles onto the bed like he was a little kid in need of a nap. Stiles was surprised though, when Derek stretched out next to him and waited for him to talk.

"Zee said that I was going to probably be a general," Stiles said.

Derek nodded his head. "I know. The wolves know."

Stiles shut his eyes. "I don't want it."

"No one ever wants war, Stiles," Derek said, and he started rubbing Stiles's back with his large, warm hand. "Go to sleep, we'll talk more when you wake up."


	8. Chapter 8

It took Stiles a long time to wake up the next morning. Everything was fuzzy, and it took him a few moments to realize that he and Derek had wrapped around each other in their sleep again. Stiles's thigh had hitched around Derek's hip, and Derek's arms held Stiles tightly to his chest. It felt good, and Stiles felt himself drifting off back to sleep when the phone rang.

Derek moaned, a vibration of sound that made Stiles giggle, and he picked his phone up and held it to his ear. "'Lo," Derek said, and Stiles closed his eyes and rested his head against Derek's chest again.

"Is she okay?" Derek asked, trying to keep his voice quiet but not really succeeding.

Stiles opened his eyes again, alerted by the agitated werewolf next to him.

"No, we'll be there, right away," Derek said. He closed his phone and patted Stiles's shoulder. "C'mon sleepy head, we've got to get to Mercy's."

Stiles resisted the urge to just pull Derek closer and sat up, rubbing his eyes. He realized what he had been doing, and he felt like his face was on fire. "Derek, I'm sorry about that…"

"It's all right," Derek said. "Friends do that."

"Oh," Stiles said, "Okay." He wasn't quite sure that he believed Derek, but he didn't really have any prior experience with kids around his own age to argue with him so he decided to go with it. "What's going on?"

"Mercy's garage got attacked last night, and Zee called me to see if we'd be up to helping out with the clean-up."

"Attacked? Was it the Unseelie?" Stiles wanted to know.

"We don't know," Derek said, "It might have just been a hate group."

Stiles stared at Derek, a little surprised. He had heard about human hate groups, but he had never experienced them. Sometimes, the Fey on Toad Suck would say something in passing, and the kids at Beacon Hills High would whisper to themselves, but Stiles had never been around any of them.

When they arrived at Mercy's Garage, there were a lot of other werewolves there. They looked at Derek and Stiles for a while, but when the one that Stiles assumed was Adam shook Derek's hand. They talked a little and helped straighten things outside, small things that didn't take a lot of effort on anyone's part while they introduced Derek and Stiles to the other werewolves.

They paused only when a television news crew came to interview Adam, and Stiles was surprised to see that one of the reporters was a werewolf. That werewolf stared at Stiles, when the interview was over, and all of the other people with him got very quiet when they realized that their werewolf was still and staring at Stiles.

"What is that?" the werewolf asked, but Derek stood in front of Stiles, his head lowered as he protected him from the outsider. "Does he have a Visa?" the werewolf continued.

Stiles sighed, and he pulled the little blue notebook out of his back pocket. "I'm cleared to leave for this visitation," Stiles said, and he showed the reporter the little book.

The reporter took it, and then he looked at Stiles. "You're the Stilinski," he breathed, like he was looking at someone famous.

The other news crew had no idea what was going on, but Derek took Stiles's Visa out of his hands before pushing him back into the garage. "You need to stay in here," he whispered to him, and Stiles was more than willing to obey Derek's orders in this situation.

Stiles looked around for something that he could do. He wanted to help Adam, who apparently had some sort of security company and he was installing cameras, but Adam said he had it covered. There were a lot of werewolves outside painting graffiti off of the garage, but Zee dragged him into the workshop and let Stiles survey all of the damage done to the machinery inside of the garage.

Stiles didn't say anything at all, just went to work, missing the look of astonishment on Zee's and the other werewolves faces as he held his hands out and pushed all the machinery back into place, straightening dents in the vehicles and mending the tools that had been destroyed without physically touching anything. He walked over to the computer equipment, stroking the metal casings and righting the electrical work inside, and then he started on the more delicate work of pushing all of the bolts and washers back into their containers, hundreds of them at a time.

"Derek," Zee called the werewolf in from outside, but Stiles was too busy cleaning to pay attention. "You need to see this," Zee said when the werewolf came in.

Stiles wasn't paying attention, too wrapped up in the magic now to lend thought to anything else.

"Stiles is young, so he doesn't know his limits," Zee was explaining. "When he uses so much magic that he drops his glamour, like now, you need to get him to snap out of it, otherwise he'll just keep using until he passes out."

Stiles wanted to correct Zee, tell him that he was fine and he just needed to do a few things, but at that point the magic really was controlling him.

He could tell that Derek was close to him, murmuring something, but he didn't know what it was. He felt Derek's arms around his own, pushing them against his chest so that Derek could cradle him close to his body, and he looked up into Derek's face, listening to the sound of the bolts he was moving back tinkle to the ground in a bell-like rain. "I'm okay," Stiles tried to tell him, but his voice sounded funny even to his own ears.

Another werewolf stepped close, holding a glass of water, but Derek wolfed out, growling and snapping at him.

"Not while his mate is weak," Adam's voice said.

"Water won't help him anyway," Zee laughed. "If you could light a fire, get it close to him…"

"I'll do it," Adam said, and Stiles heard the sound of a large metal barrel being pushed close to them, closing his eyes against the sound of Derek's growl. "Why would he spend so much magic?"

"Stiles's mother was killed in a hate crime," Zee speculated, "Perhaps he has bad memories associated with it."

"Stiles hates it when the metal around him isn't working right," Derek grunted, "it bothers him."

"You said we had to help," Stiles said, opening his eyes to look at Derek.

"I did, sweetie," Derek looked down at him, "but not like this. Just a helping hand…"

Derek called him sweetie, Stiles thought, and for that he would do almost anything. He smiled up at Derek, who kept staring at him, and Stiles realized that he still hadn't put his glamour back up. He concentrated on putting the tone of his skin back to human whiteness, instead of the pale gold that he knew it would turn, concentrated on taking the dark yellow gold out of his eyes, of making his hair appear short instead of long and spiky and dark copper. It hurt a little this time, but he knew he was back to looking human by the way that everyone relaxed around him. The fire near him felt good, and he let it warm his bones back up.

Derek picked him up and started carrying him back to his car, but Adam stopped him. "He cleaned up Mercy's garage, saved her a lot of money, and a lot of pain from having to see what happened here. He didn't even wait to be asked," he said. "When he gets better, tell him that the werewolves are behind him. We will follow a leader like him."

Derek nodded, "I will," he said. He put Stiles back into his car and drove them back to the hotel, where they were going to spend their last night.

Stiles woke up after the sun had set, blinking awake, alone in the bed. Derek was sitting beside him at the table, reading a book.

"What're you reading?" Stiles asked, curious as always.

Derek looked up, surprised that Stiles was awake. "Slaughterhouse Five," he answered, pushing the book back into his duffel bag and moving over to the bed where Stiles was. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just got really tired. I'm fine now," Stiles said.

"I saw you without your glamour," Derek said.

Stiles blushed. "I'm sorry, that must have freaked you out."

"No, you were…. Beautiful," Derek said, looking away. "Do the Fey change their appearance so that we won't know what they really look like?"

Stiles looked at the pattern on the hotel blanket, deciding it was kind of ugly. "Most people find it unnerving. It reminds them that we're different, and that's never a good thing to do around humans."

"You don't have to wear a glamour when you're around me, if you don't want," Derek offered casually.

Stiles smiled. "I'll probably only ever do that around my mate," he said.

Derek nodded. "Okay. Well, you want to go swimming?" he changed the subject as quickly as he could.

"Sure, let me get my trunks," Stiles said. He did remember that there were condoms in the bottom of his bag, fortunately, so he was careful when he pulled his trunks out. He waited until Derek was in the bathroom to quickly change, and then he hung one of the hotel towels around his shoulders.

Derek came out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of trunks and looking all ridiculous with the muscles thing, and Stiles swallowed hard before he followed him out to the hotel pool. This was probably something he should have taken into consideration when he agreed to the quickly changed subject of swimming with someone who looked like… well, Derek.

Stiles was grateful that he got into the water first, because when Derek's hair was dripping and wasn't done all up with gel, and the way that the water clumped Derek's eyelashes together wasn't really helping matters in Stiles's pants. They took a few laps around the pool, splashed some water at each other, and after Stiles convinced himself he was accustomed to the way that Derek looked they wrestled in the water some. It was kind of like slow torture, being half naked with water and Derek's smell, which wasn't really like wet dog like Stiles was hoping for. No, it was just Derek, and sexy, and Stiles really needed to move or Derek was going to figure out what was going on in his pants. There were times he hated being a boy.

They relaxed a little in the pool before going over to sit in the hot tub. The water was almost sinful against his body, and Stiles found a jet at the perfect height for his lower back. He leaned his head back to rest against the tile, and after it was quiet for a while he opened his eyes to find Derek staring at him.

"How do Fae know when they've found their mate?" Derek asked him.

"What? Oh, usually we blurt our name out to them pretty quickly," Stiles said. "Or we want to be around them all the time. Or sometimes we make stupid decisions when our mate is in danger."

"So it's nothing definite then?" Derek asked.

"Never has been," Stiles said.

"How do the Fey feel about mating with another species?" Derek asked, his voice sounded like he wasn't that interested and his hand played with the water coming out from another jet.

"Like a human?" Stiles asked, wondering if Derek wanted to know about Fey and werewolves, but too scared to ask him outright.

"A human, or a vampire, or maybe a werewolf," Derek said, not looking at Stiles at all.

"If they're mates, what's the problem?" Stiles said, and he knew his heart was beating just a little faster.

Derek noticed, and he frowned. "Maybe we should get out of the hot tub. You might not be strong enough to sit in here yet."

"I'm fine," Stiles said quickly.

"How many people know a Fey's real name?" Derek asked.

"For most Fey, just their parents and their mate. Some Fey do stupid things and let others know their name who aren't their mate, even though they want them to be, so everyone knows their real name. Like Rumplestiltskin, and humans pass that knowledge down so that he can't hurt anyone again."

"So, the fact that I know the first initial of your name…"

Stiles blushed. Derek looked up and saw it, and Stiles swore that Derek knew that Stiles thought of him as his mate. "I mean," Stiles found himself saying, "it wasn't on purpose, it just sort of happened. And I wasn't trying to force anything on you, I just wasn't thinking and…"

"Stiles," Derek said, slowly pulling himself out of the hot tub so that the hot water streamed down his absurd body and made it hard for Stiles to look at anything else, "let's go back to the room. We should get some sleep before driving back to Beacon Hills."

Stiles nodded, thankful that Derek wasn't going to press anything about the matter anymore.

Stiles waited for his turn in the shower, and when he was clean he settled on his side of the bed. He didn't protest at all when Derek pulled him into his arms, and he snuggled into the other man tightly.

He was almost asleep when he heard Derek whisper, "What's your real name, Stiles?"

"Przemysław Genim Stilinski," Stiles mumbled into Derek's chest. He felt Derek's heart skipping a beat, but since Derek was pulling him closer and kissing his forehead Stiles didn't care. He fell asleep.

Stiles woke up before Derek, and he let himself stare at the werewolf for a while. In sleep, he looked just a little different, but not too terribly much. He wasn't wearing many clothes, but that was okay with Stiles.

Stiles had no idea how long he had been staring when Derek's eyes opened, a concerned look on his face until he realized it was just him, and he smiled at the fairy. "Morning," Derek mumbled, reaching out to pull Stiles closer to him again.

Stiles was not at all adverse to how snuggly Derek was, so he enjoyed being pulled in closer to that warm body. His hands wrapped around Derek's shoulders, and his face was pressed up against Derek's chest. He was a little sad that they wouldn't be able to share a bed anymore after this, because he thought he was seriously addicted to being this close to Derek.

"Derek," Stiles said.

"Hm?" Derek asked.

"Did I tell you my name last night?" Stiles asked.

"Yes you did," Derek snuggled Stiles in closer to him. "Now I'm stuck being your mate if you like it or not."

Stiles smiled into Derek's chest, feeling giddy and stupid all at the same time. "I'd almost feel sorry for you, being stuck in that position," Stiles laughed.

"It's a hard burden," Derek agreed. Stiles tickled him, making him laugh and laugh, and Derek wrestled him to the bed, leaning over him. "Come here," he said.

Stiles did, and Derek kissed him softly on the mouth. He nuzzled into Stiles's neck, holding him close for just a moment before they got up from the bed. "I'd kiss you better, but you know, toothpaste is my friend," Derek said.

"You owe me," Stiles leveled a look at Derek, who just smiled back at him.

"Damn my luck," Derek couldn't keep the smile off of his face, and they brushed their teeth and pulled their clothing on, nudging each other and playing together.

They packed their things up and loaded them into the back of Derek's Camaro. Stiles couldn't remember what they talked about on the way back, but he did remember a lot of laughter. If Stiles had known it would be the last time that Derek was going to be that relaxed, he would have tried to make more pit stops along the way to drag the last few moments of their childhood out. They just enjoyed each other, being in each other's presence was all that they were aware of or even cared about at that time.

As they drove up to Stiles's house, they noticed that there were a few extra cars outside. "Wonder if dad's having another meeting," Stiles thought out loud.

Derek reached over for another light kiss before he walked him up to his front door. They still hadn't really kissed, not the way Stiles wanted, but he was content to wait for the time being. Stiles opened the front door and walked into his house, joking with Derek right behind him.

There were about twenty people at The Stilinski house, all of different races of supernatural creatures. Derek and Stiles waded through them until they got to the kitchen, where Stiles's dad stood with Rupert. The Sheriff looked up at Stiles, and then his eyes slid over to Derek's and he looked so sad that Stiles felt it physically. "Derek," the sheriff said, and Stiles reached back to take Derek's hand instinctively. He saw that Rupert was biting his lower lip, and not even looking at their hands he looked heartbroken just seeing Derek's face.

"What happened?" Derek asked, his hand tightening around Stiles's.

"Derek, there's been an attack," the Sheriff started to say. "We didn't know about it until it was too late, so we couldn't help…"

"Who?" Derek bit out, his heart beating so fast Stiles was scared for him.

"It was… it was your entire family. There were no survivors."

"Who did it?" Derek asked, sounding angry.

"The Unseelie have broken free," Rupert announced, and Stiles knew that Derek would have been pissed at him for talking if it weren't for the fact that Rupert sounded so scared.

"No," Stiles said, "I haven't done anything…"

"This is not your fault," Derek looked at him. "You kept us safe…"

Stiles was hurt, he hurt for Derek and Derek was trying to be strong in front of all of the strangers in his dad's kitchen. It made no sense whatsoever.

"Sit down," the Sheriff said. "There's a lot we need to talk about."


	9. Chapter 9

Stiles went back with Derek to his house that night. His dad didn't even bat an eye when Stiles went upstairs to get a change of clothing and carried his bag back out to the Camaro with Derek.

Derek was almost like a walking zombie after the conversation they had. Stiles's dad tried to feed him, but Derek couldn't eat and Stiles didn't either. It was too hard to think about that, but Rupert put food in Derek's car while they were talking so Stiles knew that they would be taken care of.

Stiles pulled Derek into the house, ran a bath for him and put him in it, and while he was upstairs in the warm water Stiles unloaded the car and cleaned it out a bit from the trip dirt. He put the food in the fridge and checked the house to make sure nothing had been damaged while they were gone, and then he went back upstairs to pull Derek out of his bath.

Derek was just sitting there, so Stiles washed his hair and soaped him up pretty good before rinsing him off and pushing him into bed. He pulled the covers up around Derek, who finally blinked and grabbed a hold of Stiles's arm before he pulled away. "Don't leave me," he whimpered.

"Don't worry," Stiles said, moving up to kiss Derek on the forehead. "I'm going to be in bed soon. I just want to change my clothing and do a few things first, okay?"

Derek nodded his head, looking afraid that Stiles was going to disappear if he took his eyes off of him. So Stiles didn't leave the room except to make sure the Camaro was put away in the garage and then to lock the front doors. He noticed that Derek lay back down in bed as soon as he got into the bedroom, and he knew that Derek must have been listening to him move around. Stiles changed his clothing in the bedroom, brushed his teeth with the bathroom door open, and even went to the bathroom that way despite the fact that it made him blush bright red. He pulled out his laptop and shot Zee an e-mail, and then he crawled into bed with Derek, dragging his body in close.

Derek wrapped his huge arms around Stiles's waist and laid his head on Stiles's chest. He still hadn't cried, Stiles knew, but that would come soon. Hopefully sooner than later, because later there was going to be nothing but war and fighting. Whether they liked it or not, the Unseelie were going to pay for what they did to his mate. Stiles wasn't even the one who put them away and they chose to attack him. Dumbass move on their part.

"Stiles," Derek said, "Is it real? Did it really happen?"

Stiles didn't say anything at all. He pulled Derek's face up and kissed his lips, slow and soft. Derek opened his mouth under Stiles's, and the kiss took on a life of its own. Lips slid against each other, tongues took slow strokes, teeth nipped at lips. Derek's hands came up to cradle Stiles's face, and Stiles wrapped his arms around Derek and threaded his fingers through thick black hair.

"Take the glamour off," Derek told him, and Stiles released it with a sigh into the wolf's mouth. He concentrated on nothing but Derek then, his mouth making no sound except for a stuttered breath, his hands stroking Derek's skin, seeking to comfort him, to push away all thought but Stiles.

Derek whined into Stiles's neck, and Stiles felt tears against his skin. He pulled his wolf in closer to his body, hoping that the warmth he found there would comfort him. Derek sobbed into Stile's neck and shoulder, and Stiles said some comforting words, but it took a while for Derek's brain to shut down and let him have some rest from the tragedy. He fell asleep and Stiles felt relieved for him, because it was too much pain for any one person to handle. He was glad he lost his mother before he had any significant memories of her, because knowing her before losing her would have been so much worse.

Stiles woke up to sounds of people in the house, and he slipped out of bed, grabbing the weapons that he had brought with him from his father's house. He crept down the stairs, his steps as light as snowfall, his sword and his dagger relaxed at his sides.

In the living room sat Jackson, Danny, Scott, Allison, and Lydia. They looked up at Stiles with tears in their eyes, and Stiles relaxed.

"What are we going to do?" Jackson almost whispered.

"We'll be here, and when they come again, we'll be ready," Stiles said.

"It's really war, then, isn't it?" Lydia asked.

"Yes," Stiles said, trying not to feel responsible. He wished he knew what it was that he had done to break the Seal. He wished that he could take it back, no matter what it was, so that Derek would not be going through this pain.

"Is he okay?" Allison interrupted his thoughts.

"No," Stiles said. "But he is sleeping, and I want to leave him like that for a while." He put his weapons on the living room coffee table and moved to the kitchen. He needed to make food, needed to do something because doing nothing was not an option. He finally understood the human soldier's creed of 'Hurry up and wait,' and it was obnoxious as it sounded.

Stiles set aside some of the food he had made while he made the rest of Derek's pack eat. He knew that Derek was not going to be hungry, but he needed to eat to keep up his strength. He carried it upstairs to put next to the bed so Derek could have some when he woke up.

Derek was already out of bed though, and Stiles stared in some confusion. "Derek? You can go back to sleep…"

"I can't," Derek said. He was pulling on his pants. "We're at war. There will be time to sleep later. Right now, we need to make plans."

Stiles nodded, and then he picked out a shirt for Derek to wear. Derek slipped it on without speaking, and he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and do his daily hygiene regimen. He hugged Stiles once before taking his food and going downstairs. He ate while the rest of his Pack pulled out notebooks and pencils and pens, because Derek was going to have to make a few lists.

The doorbell sounded, and Stiles looked out the peephole before opening the door. He stared in some confusion at Erica and two people who had to be her parents. There were three other children behind her, but Erica was the only one that Stiles knew.

"Tribute," her parents said as they shoved Erica into Stiles's arms. "She will make a good werewolf."

Stiles couldn't even ask what was going on before they turned around and left, leaving a very nervous Erica in his arms.

"What?" Derek asked from the dining room table, but they were interrupted by Rupert showing up on the front steps.

He looked at Erica and nodded his head. "The humans remember. Good," he said, "it will make things easier."

"What are you talking about?" Stiles asked him.

"There is a supernatural war brewing," Rupert said, "humans know that they are in no way equipped to fight something like this. They have brought tribute to the wolf clans since time in memorial, hoping that we can keep the monsters from under their bed." Rupert pushed Erica towards Derek. "You need to make your pack stronger, wolf. Give her the Bite."

Derek stared at Erica, who looked at him without much emotion in her eyes at all. "Do you want this?" Derek asked.

"Yes," Erica said, looking just a little bit scared.

Derek nodded, and Stiles tried not to feel jealous as he kneeled in front of her, rucking her shirt up so that he could bite into her side.

Blood flowed down, and Erica gasped in pain. But the bite was true and it was sound, and as Derek was the only Alpha in a fifty mile radius it started working immediately.

Allison and Lydia took Erica upstairs to a room, where they would wait through her transformation with her. Stiles hoped that they said nice things to her, because he didn't know how it would feel.

The doorbell rang again, and this time Stiles and Rupert welcomed an ice giant into Derek's home. "I have come to swear loyalty," the creature said, and he presented Stiles with a six-year-old wrapped in a white blanket. "My child's name is Isaac," the creature said. "He is yours for as long as you need him. I and mine are yours for as long as he is alive and in your care."

Rupert knew the formalities that were associated with this gesture. "We see that you have brought tribute, and we will raise him to be a warrior. We will lead you as we guide your son, with love and trust and knowledge. We are one."

Stiles held the child in his arms, who stared up at him with perfectly innocent blue eyes and blond curls springing from his tiny head. He looked up at the ice giant who presented the child to him, and the ice giant took one last look at its child before turning and walking away.

"Rupert," Stiles breathed.

"This is war. Words can be forgotten. Paper can be destroyed. You know how the Fey view these things," Rupert said, looking at Stiles. "A life is precious, and it will remind you of itself. You are leading these clans into battle, and they want you to have a constant reminder of what your decisions will leave behind."

As if Stiles didn't understand this already. He remembered Isaac from the Reservation though, and he set about feeding him at the dining room table with the battle plans scattered across it.

"How are we going to take care of a child, Stiles?" Derek asked him.

"We will do it," Stiles said with a fair degree of stubbornness. "We don't have a choice."

When the doorbell rang again, this time with a sand spirit, Stiles was more prepared. He took the dark skinned eight year old child named Boyd and sat him at the table with Isaac, putting out more food. He remembered that Isaac and Boyd were best friends on the Reservation, and that they would probably find comfort in each other.

"What's a sand spirit?" Derek asked.

"They come from Africa, although Boyd's family has been in America for at least eight generations. They can pull the sand much like I do with metal, and they can form it into unbreakable glass. They are powerful, calm, and peace loving. They are powerful, and there are stories about how they made whole cities from glass alone before it was destroyed by invaders." Stiles summed up the old African folk tale for Derek.

Derek nodded, staring at Boyd and Isaac.

The last time the doorbell rang that morning, Stiles did not recognize the man standing behind it at all.

It wasn't every day that Stiles saw a Native American. This one stood at the door by himself, he wore only two pieces of red cloth bound at his hips by strings, and knee high moccasin boots heavy with fringe. His hair hung straight down to his waist, and his face held calm acceptance of his surroundings and old knowledge.

"Greetings," Stiles said, for lack of anything better to say.

The man looked at him, his head tilted. "You are the Stilinski?"

"Yes," Stiles said, staring at him.

"I am Tokala. I have come to help you fight."

"Please, come in," Rupert said, breathing deep this one's scent. It was like ozone, Stiles thought, Ozone and something else that he couldn't identify. Maybe rain mixed with the warm scent of feathers. "It is not often that the Natives of this land send one of their gods to us."

Tokala laughed. "I am not a god," Tokala said, and his voice was very deep like thunder. "I am simply an old bird."

"Thunderbird," Stiles breathed. He had never met one and knew even less about them than he did humans.

"Wakinyan," Tokala agreed. "I am simply wakinyan. Your old ones have invaded my homeland. I was told to come by and help."

Stiles nodded, staring at the man. He gestured for him to make himself comfortable at the table, where everyone stared at him for a while. The man seemed happy and he kept to himself, so after a while Stiles went back to planning with Derek. "Who told you to come by?" Stiles asked.

"The President's wizard," Tokala said, picking at some of the food at the table. "Did you learn to cook in the South?"

"Yes," Stiles said. "I grew up in Arkansas, on Toad Suck."

"Makes sense," Tokala said. "This is ridiculously good."

Derek smiled then, and Stiles thrilled to see it. "The president has a wizard?" Stiles asked.

"Ever since Kennedy, it's been tradition."

"Huh," Stiles said. "That's interesting."

The conversation got waylaid though, when Allison and Lydia came down the stairs. They stared at the new additions, and both Boyd and Isaac started following Lydia around the house.

"So what can you do?" Stiles asked Tokala.

"I am a thunderbird," Tokala said. "I have fought dragons in the skies, I can control lightening and thunder…"

"You've fought dragons?" Rupert asked, looking skeptically at the thin frame of the creature in front of him.

"Yes, I have fought Unchekula, the dragon that lives in the Missouri River," Tokala said.

"There's a dragon in the Missouri?" Rupert asked, surprised.

Tokala cocked his head at Rupert. "You do know that there are Native American dragons, don't you? I mean, I know that you Europeans think that everything started and ended with you, but you are aware that there are other cultures with their own experience with our kind?"

Rupert looked angry. "I would know if there were other dragons…"

"We keep Unchekula sealed in the river. He seeks to destroy everything. There is also a dragon that lives down South, near Mexico City. The tribes there carved his likeness into some of their architecture. Did you think you were the only one?"

"Are there werewolves?" Derek asked.

Tokala looked sad for a moment. "The last of the Shungmanitou were killed at Wounded Knee is 1890. American soldiers discovered that their first machine gun was operational when they opened fire on the women and children at Wounded Knee Camp. The wolves who lost their families there went to take the Long Walk after they discovered that words and papers meant nothing to the American government."

Derek stared at Tokala for a while.

Tokala nodded. "I heard that much the same happened to you, caused by the Unseelie."

Derek nodded.

"Do not do what my people did, Derek of the Hale Family. Do not lay down your arms and give up in sadness. It will hurt now, and it should because that means you are a good man, but do not give up because of the pain. Honor their memory with war, and teach them that there will never be a time when doing such a thing will be accepted by this reality, because once they think you are easy or weak they will never give until you and all those you care for have been annihilated."

"I can't believe that you're following orders based on what the President's Wizard said," Derek said.

"He's my cousin's lover," Tokala shrugged. "I have been through much with him. I would follow him into Hell, if he hinted he wanted me there alongside of him."

Stiles nodded. He knew how Tokala felt as he looked at Derek. Derek saw Stiles looking at him, and then he gestured back at the maps and the battle plans that were laid out on the dining room table.

"How do we know when and where they're going to attack?" Stiles asked. "How do we know where they are now?"

"That's where I come in," Tokala said. He stood up and walked to the door. "I'll scout around and come back with information," he said as he opened the door and his body broke apart into a thousand ravens, taking to the skies with silent wings.

"The President is aware of us," Stiles breathed. "He sent his Wizard's bodyguard."

Derek nodded, biting his lower lip as he thought. "This is bigger than just the attack on my family."

Rupert looked at Derek. He looked at Stiles, and his face only softened for a minute. "They attacked Derek's family because they know the way to piss off a metalzauber is to attack his mate. Since Derek wasn't near, they took the closest thing to it."

Stiles's guilt could have filled the Pacific Ocean.

"No," Derek growled, pulling Stiles in close to him. "I blame only the perpetrators of this, not you. They chose to do this to get to you, you did not cause this at all. You did not make the decision to harm someone else, you would have never made a decision like this."

"Don't be so sure," Stiles warned Derek. "I will not be merciful in my vengeance."

"You will," Derek said with complete confidence. "You will lock them back into Faery, even though you might have to kill a lot of them to do it. You will not harm the innocent in this war because I know you, Stiles," Derek's hands caressed Stiles's arms, and they wrapped around his back, pulling him closer into his chest. He stayed there for a while before Stiles wrapped his arms around Derek, too. This was the only comfort Stiles wanted, but when the rest of the pack jumped in for hugs, he found he didn't mind too much.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles took over planning some of the Hale Family Funeral from his dad. The sheriff was trying to make all the decisions for his son-in-law so he wouldn't have to think about it, but Stiles wanted to be in on it to. Despite the fact that Derek obviously didn't hold him responsible in any way, Stiles still felt a little guilty and he felt that this was one way that he could make it better.

Lots of people from the reservation were more than willing to help out. Insurance took care of the money with plenty left over, so Derek wouldn't have to worry about his financial future. On top of that, one of the leprechauns had figured out how to invest, so the sheriff gave part of Derek's money to him and told him to have at it. Leprechauns liked money in any form, and as they weren't much for fighting the clan that lived on Beacon Hills felt like they could participate in the war effort in this way.

Stiles spent a lot of time studying war tactics, looking them up on the Internet and consulting with Rupert. Tokala put him into contact with some people from West Pointe, who were very interested in discussing things with Stiles. He had to keep himself from spilling too many secrets about his kind, but he was more than willing to share anything about the Unseelie that they asked.

School had of course been cancelled, as the humans made their way off the reservation and into the rest of civilization at Tokala's announcement that he was pretty sure they were going to attack Beacon Hills. There were camps of them near the old Hale House, a fact that angered Derek and refocused his efforts on training his pack. They were all focused and coming along nicely, and the Marrok had sent in more werewolves to help out. Apparently, a lot of werewolves had been bitten during the Vietnam War, which was good because Stiles believed that a lot of the newer Wars had not been fought with the same tactics and they would need some things that other people might consider dirty. He didn't think that the Unseelie would understand "civilized war tactics," and that many humans and newer werewolves would balk if they had to do something that would be considered barbaric. He knew the enemy would not hold those same moral opinions.

All of these things did not lead to happy Derek and Stiles times, which was what Stiles found to be the most frustrating thing in the world. Now that he was allowed to touch and taste and feel, there was no time. They still slept together, or more like spent their unconscious times together, because they fell into bed every night exhausted and didn't have enough energy to do more than quickly kiss each other and hold each other tightly before they passed out. He felt guilty for wanting that from Derek when Derek was dealing with so many other things, and he felt guilty for wanting that for himself when he knew that his energies should be spent elsewhere, but damn it all if he didn't just want.

It didn't help matters that Derek was being be his glorified sexy self, all sweaty and muscley and man-like outside while he was training the wolves, or that he would come in and smell all piney and clean-sweaty and just like Derek when they came in to get water. He would give Stiles these 'I'm so sad but I'm happy to see you in my kitchen planning a war' type looks that drove Stiles up a wall, and then go back outside in his long baggy sweat pants that should not be sexy but totally were and work out more of his man pain. Which Stiles was fine with, sure, but he would have preferred some of that man pain worked out on him.

So Stiles continued to plan a war in a state of sexual frustration that Rupert assured him that every general was forced to do, and perhaps if the other side would have just gotten laid more they wouldn't be causing their side to give up getting laid in favor of planning countermeasures against them in the first place.

Stiles conceded that Rupert made a great argument, but it still wasn't getting him laid so instead of answering he just grunted.

The kids, though, the kids were a great distraction for Stiles. Isaac and Boyd both tended to cling to each of Stiles's legs, making walking a difficult task. They demanded stories and cookies, being the high maintenance children that they were, but they usually settled for one or the other. Stiles would try to take a few hours out of his day to set up a kind of school for them, making sure that they were reading at level and doing arithmetic problems that he had to pull out of his head. He had Boyd doing multiplication flashcards and Isaac doing addition flashcards, and he had them practice their handwriting until it was beautiful. He made them read and illustrate their own stories and put those on the fridge with magnets, and Derek would come inside after training every night and declare that his sons were geniuses.

They were calling them Daddy Stiles and Papa Derek by the end of their first week together, and Stiles muttered to Rupert that he and the Virgin Mary had something in common. Derek heard it though, and he frowned a little at the comment, but nothing was done because there was still that huge war thing coming up.

Stiles did like having the kids around, and it made his dad insist on him moving in with Derek so that he could watch his children better. Rupert was not a fan of this plan, but he helped Stiles pack everything up again and move it to what everyone was calling the New Hale House.

A month after the Hale funeral, Stiles was in the middle of reading the Book of Invasions, which was part of the Book of Leinster, one of the most accurate sources he could find on the last Faery War, when Derek pulled him away from his table. Stiles noticed that everyone else had gone away from the house, which was the first time that had happened in forever, and he looked up at Derek kind of confused.

Derek had showered and pulled on a pair of jeans, and he was tugging lightly on Stiles's hand. "I don't know how you want to do this," he was saying, "But I can't wait any longer. I've tried to keep my hands off of you, but there are just things that you're going to have to do as my mate."

Stiles felt confused, but things became more apparent to him as Derek dragged him towards their bedroom.

Stiles would have corrected Derek's assumption that he didn't want to do this, but that would have taken time away from just being given permission to do all the things that he wanted to do to Derek, so instead of protesting he just kissed him in the middle of the hall, as soon as he figured out what was going on.

Derek didn't seem to mind his reaction all that much, and if he was surprised he had apparently decided that reaction could wait for later, too. His hands were too busy tugging at Stiles's shirt, which made a very pretty mess on the hallway floor, and his own shirt, which created a neat kind of symmetry a few feet down on the other side of the hall. Stiles was sure they could admire the artwork in the way that the fabric of their shirts created later, because right then Derek's hand had slid down the back of his pants and was holding onto his ass like Stiles might want to get away from him or something.

Stiles couldn't keep himself from touching Derek, sliding his hand up velvety skin covering hard muscle, shaping his flesh into small mounds to hold onto, licking into his mouth and down his throat in a desperate attempt to find out how he tasted everywhere.

Derek kicked at the doorway to their bedroom, pushing Stiles in and then pushing him up against his door so that Stiles could have some sort of support. Stiles was grateful for it, because Derek was kissing and licking his way down his own chest. "Drop the glamour," Derek insisted, and Stiles complied. He had no idea why Derek liked it so much, but he wasn't going to argue when a man who looked like that was unzipping his pants and pushing them down around his ankles.

Derek licked a bit at his thighs and his hips, and Stiles whimpered from the amount of teasing that was going on down there. He hadn't ever been this hard before, and he was a little worried that by the time Derek finally got to where he wanted him he wouldn't have any control whatsoever.

Derek nudged one of Stiles's legs out of his pants and spread his legs, giving him more access. Stiles threaded his fingers through Derek's hair and whimpered, worried that he was putting a little too much pressure on the other man's head. Derek seemed to like it though, and he stuck his tongue out as he looked up and met Stiles's eyes as he took one long lick up from Stiles's balls to the tip of his prick.

"Fuck," Stiles cursed, staring as Derek took the very tip of him into his mouth and then slid his mouth down, his lips stretching around the width of Stiles's cock. One of Derek's hands reached up and cradled Stiles's balls, smearing the wet from his saliva back to his perineum and rubbing it in with hard, calloused fingers. Stiles's hips bucked, shoving his dick back into Derek's throat and Derek just swallowed around it like it was the only thing he wanted to do in the world. He made a growling noise at the back of his throat, and if Stiles thought he was susceptible to Derek simply talking then he grossly underestimated the impact of having that sound directly on his dick.

Derek let Stiles fuck his mouth for a while, which was good because Stiles really didn't think that he could have stopped himself. He did this amazing thing with his tongue, but then he pulled off of Stiles with a wet popping sound and he pushed him over to the bed.

Stiles stumbled a bit, but Derek was on top of him, biting the back of his neck and licking his way down his spine, his tongue tracing hot wet patterns that cooled too quickly in the air. Stiles was thrusting into the sheets because he just couldn't stop himself, and then Derek licked his way down between Stiles's ass and found his hole.

Stiles had never had anyone touch him there before, and it was awesome. Derek licked around him and then pushed his tongue inside, opening him up with that muscle while occasionally wrapping his hand around Stiles's dick and squeezing lightly, and then he pushed a finger in so he could fit more of his tongue in there, too.

Stiles was grateful that everyone was gone although he was pretty sure they could still hear his moans from miles away. Derek's mouth was wet, and his fingers were tracing patterns inside of him, and his hand was tight around the base of his dick so that he couldn't come. Stiles found himself promising all sorts of retribution on Derek if he didn't let him come, didn't let him find relief, and Derek just kept licking and fingering and tongue fucking his ass like it didn't matter at all.

Stiles almost sobbed in relief when Derek put the tip of himself inside, still holding tightly to the base of his dick. His body stretched around Derek, but he was so relaxed from his earlier ministrations that it just felt right, like Derek belonged inside of him like that.

"Damn, so tight," Derek whispered, sucking praise onto the back of Stiles's neck. He pushed further in, and Stiles felt himself shaking with the need to come. Then it all got worse as Derek hit his prostate.

Stiles swore he saw stars, he felt so full and his legs were spread so wide and Derek started stroking him with his hand as he pulled out. Being filled was almost as bad as when he pulled out, and when Stiles had adjusted Derek went faster.

Stiles was crying by the time that Derek let him come. He was a fucked out mess, his body didn't want to handle everything that Derek was throwing at him, and Derek bit his shoulder as he came inside of Stiles, hurting him just a little.

"Sorry," Derek whispered into his back. "That was supposed to last a little longer. You're just so damn sexy…"

Stiles wiped his face, turning to look at Derek. "I couldn't have handled longer. That was perfect."

Derek smiled at him, kissing his forehead before getting up from the bed to wash off a little. Stiles followed him, and they decided to take a shower almost immediately, and Derek seemed content to just wash Stiles and let Stiles wash him. They stroked each other and kissed and it wasn't as intense as the first time, but there were so many touches that they needed to experiment with, and Stiles wouldn't have given up staring up into Derek's eyes when he was looking at him like that for anything.

Stiles wasn't too sure how long they had stayed in the shower together, but he wouldn't have traded that time for anything in the world when it was over. Derek was a little surprised when Stiles waited until he was wrapped in a towel before taking his face in his hands and pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. "Thank you," Stiles said, "for making that my first time."

Derek looked shocked, "I wasn't sure that you wanted it… that you wanted me…"

Stiles felt his eyes growing round, and he forced himself to blink a few times. "What?"

"I know you got stuck with me as your mate…"

"Oh yes, poor unfortunate me, getting stuck with the hottest Alpha in the world as a mate, who just happens to be my best friend that I'm head over heels in love with. How in the world am I not crying with the agony and unfairness that my life is?" Stiles teased.

Derek looked shocked. "You love me?"

"I thought that was obvious…" Stiles said. "Just like you love me."

"I do," Derek said, quickly.

Stiles smiled at Derek. "What made you think…"

"I just couldn't imagine that you would feel like that, that something like you could happen to me," Derek said.

"Derek," Stiles said, and then he decided that there had definitely been too many words between them, and he settled for just kissing him.

They put their clothing on after that, which didn't get done very quickly because they had to pause every few moments or so for another kiss. Stiles didn't quit whispering that he loved Derek, and Derek kept turning red and at times tried growled at Stiles when he got too obnoxious about it, and even once tackled him to the floor so that he could tickle the crazy out of him.

It didn't work, or so Stiles claimed, but he was pretty pleased that they were dressed and semi-presentable when Lydia came back from taking the kids to the park and out for dinner at a children's pizza place with loud noises and florescent lights.

Isaac and Boyd came running up to Derek and Stiles, throwing their prizes on the floor of the entryway and trying to make them fall over by wrapping their arms around their legs. Isaac was sporting a huge black eye, and Boyd looked vaguely guilty.

"What happened?" Stiles demanded of Lydia.

"One of the cubs said that he could build a better sandcastle than Boyd, and Isaac insisted that he was a… I'm sorry, what did you call him?" Lydia asked.

"A hobgoblin…" Isaac mumbled into Stiles's pants leg.

Stiles tried not to laugh, but he was sixteen and things like self-control were still being learned. "You shouldn't call the other kids names," he tried to reprimand.

Derek growled at Isaac. "You shouldn't let the other kids hit you," he said. "You're faster than a werewolf."

Isaac looked like he was going to cry. "I'm sorry Papa," he wailed, and Derek picked him up quickly and held him to his chest, looking at Stiles completely and totally panicked. Boyd started wailing too, not sure why Isaac was so upset, and so Stiles struggled to pick him up, too.

Lydia just laughed at them as she left them, the traitor, and Derek and Stiles were left bribing their children with ice cream and then putting them into bed with them, where they fell into an exhausted sleep.

"I think that could have been handled better," Derek said, looking at Stiles.

"Maybe," Stiles agreed. "If you have any tips, feel free to share them."

"Maybe we could look up answers in the Internet?" Derek suggested, curling up around Boyd but still facing Isaac and Stiles.

"Maybe we should hire a nanny for all four of us," Stiles suggested, staring back at Derek without his glamour, because that's how Derek liked seeing him.

"That's probably the best idea I've heard all night," Derek said sleepily, his eyelids closing.

"Certainly not the best," Stiles mumbled, a yawn taking over his words.

Derek understood him anyway, and Stiles could tell that he was laughing despite the fact that he was falling asleep. Stiles pulled Isaac closer to him when the boy whimpered a little bit, and after he had whispered some nonsense into the child's ear he relaxed in his Daddy's arms with trust that only a child could have. Stiles looked at his new family, and despite the looming war he appreciated this moment for what it was.


	11. Chapter 11

Stiles was nervous about the battle. Actually, scared out of his mind. All of these people and supernatural creatures were depending on him, and he was pretty damn sure he wasn't ready to be a General against the Dark Fae at the age of sixteen. Why wasn't there anyone else who could take his place? Someone more knowledgable and wise and well… adult? Where were the commanders of the last Fae armies? Why in the world were they trusting Stiles to do this?

Stiles had a million battle plans ready, plans and back up plans and back up plans to his back up plans. He had studied modern warfare to the point where it felt like the knowledge was going to bleed out of his ears, tactics and evolutions in weaponry and styles of combat, and then he studied the generals in charge and read their diaries and historical discourse on each and every one of their decisions. Stiles still was worried that there was no way that he was going to be able to beat the Dark Fae, because they had nothing to do in Faery for the past thousand years or so but train for revenge against the Seelie Courts.

Stiles noticed with some concern that Derek would come check in on him late at night as he stared at the plans strewn around him. He had multiple maps of Beacon Hills hanging up on the walls of the dining room, multiple plans detailing troop movement, supplies routes, paths of retreat, offensive and defensive strikes, natural and man made helps and hindrances in the landscape based on patterns other troops faced on similar terrains all over the world. He had lists of weapons and other supplies that were available to him, lists of code words and passwords and super secret documents that the American government was lending him, lists of the names of the people he was going to send in to be killed.

Derek would wrap his arms around Stiles and drag him back to bed, where Stiles would lay awake until Derek was sleeping and then he would crawl back out to study some more.

When the rider came in, on a skeletal horse, blood red banners hanging from his front and sides with an emblem of a spider stitched onto them, his pale white face and long white hair whipping in the wind, Stiles could feel the fear of everyone around him dripping like poison.

The rider stood in front of the house, carrying the banner of a long lost house, standing so still he seemed like Death.

"It's a herald," Stiles whispered, fascinated. Everyone protested when Stiles moved outside, but Stiles turned to them. "Stay."

They watched as Stiles walked up to the herald, staring out the windows as the herald handed Stiles a piece of parchment, rolled up and sealed with wax imprinted with the same spider on the herald's clothing. The herald bowed, and then looked up at Stiles surprised when he didn't chop his head off when they had the opportunity.

Everyone held their breath as the rider went away, but Stiles walked back into the house, shut the door behind him, and then he laughed and laughed and laughed. He stared at Tokala for a moment, and then he glanced at Erica, and he laughed some more.

"You want to share the joke?" Derek asked, a little impatient with Stiles's apparent grasp of sanity.

"Oh my God," Stiles said, wiping away a tear. "Oh my God, this is hilarious."

"Stiles, darling," Lydia said, tapping her foot. "It's time to share with the rest of the class what you found to be so funny about the man who was riding a skeleton horse and was the creepiest fucking thing we've ever seen."

"He was riding a skeleton horse," Stiles laughed, folded over on himself as he gasped for air. "He was in full heraldry, riding a skeleton horse. Oh shit," Stiles said, laughing some more. He looked back up at Tokala, who was staring at him like he was an idiot for a while. Stiles doubled over in laughter again. "Oh my God, Tokala, if you don't get this one…"

Tokala glanced around at everyone else, who were giving him the stink eye now, too. He stared at them, and then he looked at Stiles, and then he stared some more at the rest of them, but they could all see it in his eyes when his brain clicked onto what Stiles was thinking, and then he was laughing, too.

"It's like World War Two?" Tokala asked, "The Russian Front?"

Stiles was sitting on the ground again, gasping for breath because he just couldn't stop laughing anymore. Tokala didn't laugh as hard as Stiles, possibly because he had slept more in the past weeks than Stiles had, but he still giggled a little every time someone else showed their impatience.

"Stiles," Derek growled.

"Okay, okay," Stiles said, his face red from the laughing and tears streaming. "So in World War Two, the Russians lined up on the battlefield with their horses, holding their muskets and sabres and they stood proudly…" Stiles wiped his face, "against the German tanks."

"What?" Derek asked.

"The Russians were the most fearsome army in the world, in their day and time. But the world moves on. New tactics develop. New methods of fighting, new weapons… we just got greeted by the Unseelie's answer to the Knights of Camelot. They've been locked in Faery so long that they don't know how we've progressed…"

"Surely not," Derek said, "They would have seen something, heard something…"

"They have no idea!" Stiles said, and he almost looked sad. "They don't know about the Internet, or television, or even freakin' eight tracks or record players. They don't know how to get information in this day and time and information is what wars are fought on. No, Tokala, you and I are going to meet them on the…" and Stiles smirked for a moment, "on the battlefield tomorrow morning. We are going to negotiate with them. Now, I have a few things that I need to do, but everyone go home and prepare for the worst. I'll call you if I need you. Tokala, you're going to stay here with me."

Tokala nodded, and Derek bristled a little but he nodded his head. "I want to be in on it."

"That's fair. You can be. Anyone else?"

"Me," Boyd said, looking up at his father. "I can fight."

Stiles looked like he was considering it. "You can come, but if there is one hint of trouble, you are leaving with Rupert."

"I'm going to be there?" Rupert asked, a little surprised.

"Yes, and you will be prepared to drop your glamour if I order you to," Stiles said.

"Shock and awe?" Rupert asked.

"Best battle tactic of them all," Stiles said.

"Then I want to go, too," Isaac said, taking hold of Boyd's hand.

Stiles looked like he was thinking again, and he had to wipe a grin off of his face. "Same stipulation as Boyd though, if I order it, you will leave with Rupert."

Derek frowned, not liking the way that Stiles was obviously thinking.

"Do you trust me?" Stiles asked, ignoring everyone else in the room.

"Not on this, not really… no," Derek said.

"Well, sorry," Stiles said. "This is going to work."

Derek nodded his head. "Just because I don't trust you doesn't mean that I won't be standing behind you tomorrow."

Stiles nodded. "Someone is going to have to make sure that I'm not completely insane."

"I would prefer that we made that assessment before we decided not to go into battle," Lydia said.

"This will work, trust me," Stiles said.

"Why… why did you look at me?" Erica asked Stiles, "After you looked at Tokala, why did you look at me?"

"Because, you were there when that boy was bullying me," Stiles shrugged. "It's like when jocks in school bully the nerds; they just don't realize yet that those nerds are going to grow up and be their bosses and decide whether or not they get a pay raise. Because human social hierarchy isn't determined by who is the strongest anymore, it's determined by who has the brains, who can do the math, and who can figure out the science. So yeah, when we're kids, and when the Unseelie roamed the earth, brawn mattered. It just simply doesn't, anymore."

"You think we can go against their magic?" Lydia asked him, like Stiles had forgotten that the Unseelie weren't all brawn.

Stiles smiled. "Oh, I've got an answer to that, too," he said, taking a glance at Tokala and Boyd. "Because if there is one thing that every creature is scared of, it's unknown magic."

Stiles made a few phone calls, and everyone tried to listen in but Tokala called his cousin's lover, who put a shield of some sort around the dining room from all the way across America. That was intimidating magic in itself, but Stiles kept moving around, tearing down new maps and putting up copies of them. It was nerve wracking to see his brain in action, terrifying to see him posting down coordinates and taking notes and getting advice from the American Military's Special Forces.

No one really slept that night, adrenaline and fear keeping them up and staring into the room from the living room. There was a lot of pacing, but finally the time came and Stiles stepped out of the dining room with an audible popping sound as he broke Tokala's friend's spell.

Stiles hung up a map on the wall, showing them the layout of where he thought the Unseelie would be. He pointed to the place of parley that he had been informed of. Then he stared explaining what he had planned, and by the end of it everyone was smiling.

"It's too easy," Jackson said, but even he sounded convinced.

"Maybe, but if all goes well, my back-up plan should work," Stiles shrugged. "Are you ready?"

Everyone turned to get their weapons, and Stiles paused to hug Derek tightly. "No matter what," Stiles whispered into his werewolf's ear, "I love you."

Derek held Stiles close, and he kissed his forehead before he kissed his lips. "I really think that you're crazy."

Stiles smiled, but he pulled away and handed a laser-scoped rifle to Allison and Scott. "Are you ready?"

Everyone left the house to take their positions, and then Stiles nodded at Tokala.

Tokala picked up his cell phone and dialed a number. "Ready, Jiyong," he said to his cousin's lover.

And then there was a feeling of nothing, and then Stiles, Derek, Boyd, Isaac, Tokala, and Rupert were standing on a field at the place of parley, in front of five of the most frighteningly beautiful Unseelie Generals stood in front of their horde of almost five thousand perfectly lined up warriors.

The Unseelie blinked a few times at their appearance, and then stared at the children that stood calmly in front of them. "This is a parley for war, and they send children?" one of them said, astride a great spider that hissed at Stiles.

"I am the General of the Seelie Court," Stiles announced, standing straight and tall. "I give you this opportunity to lay down your arms and retreat back to your prison."

The one on the spider laughed, and the others with him laughed, too. "This is what the Seelie send against us? Children who haven't even had a chance for their balls to drop?"

"Are the werewolves fighting with the Seelie now?" another General stared at Derek. "They need the wolves? And have the ice giants been reduced to a child barely out of diapers?"

"Look, there are some things that have changed since you've been away," Stiles said.

The Generals blinked at Stiles. "Do you have a Dragon with you, Lord of Metal?" one of them hissed, and Stiles recognized a vampire when he saw one. He wasn't a human vampire, either, no he was one of the Old Court.

"Like I said, things have changed. For example, do you even know where you are?" Stiles said, patiently.

The Generals became still, glaring at Stiles.

"You're standing in the middle of California," Stiles prompted them. "Do you know where that is?"

"Caledonia?" the white one on the spider asked. "The land south of the Scots? This doesn't look like the lowlands…"

"California," Stiles said. "You're in California, which is a state in the United States of America, which is a country on the continent of North America, which is almost on the other side of the world from Caledonia, which doesn't even exist anymore, by the way, because that land is owned by the United Kingdom."

"No matter, we are here for revenge on you and the Seelie Court," the vampire hissed at him.

"Yeah, but you're not going to get it. You've been away for over a thousand years, you don't understand how war is fought anymore. I mean, look at you," Stiles said. "You're lined up. No one has lined up for war since 1865, and even then it was going out of style. We all fight like his people now," Stiles stuck his thumb out at Tokala.

The General blinked.

"You know it's true. You've never even seen someone like Tokala before, have you?" Stiles asked.

"Toe-kah-lah?" the General repeated. He was starting to look confused.

"His people held off Viking invasions for over five hundred years, made them turn around and go back home," Stiles said.

"Vikings?" one of the generals repeated. "The Norse?"

"Yes, the Norse. You were even having problems with Norse invaders when you were locked away, weren't you? And the Norse defeated the Romans a time or two, so you know about how fierce they were."

"Then why isn't there more of them?" the General sneered. "You should be surrounded…"

"My people were killed by their germ-warfare. It took them almost one hundred years to kill ninety million of my people. But they still fear us in war, and every country in the world now uses the tactics of my people in battle," Tokala said, and Stiles heard the pride in his voice.

"Germ warfare?" one of the Generals asked, completely confused.

"That reminds me," Stiles said, and he couldn't hide the steel in his eyes. "I owe you for what you did to my lover's family. Tokala, if you don't mind, they really don't need their left flank."

Tokala nodded, and he held his arms up so quickly that the Unseelie Generals flinched back, and stared in horror as Tokala called down so many lightning strikes from the sky that he decimated over one thousand of their warriors that held the left flank, leaving chaos in their wake.

The Generals glared back at Stiles, who held their gaze calmly. "One of my warriors just took out one thousand of your men, gentlemen. Would you like another lesson on modern warfare?"

One of the Generals started sneering, but Stiles held his hand up this time, and a squadron of the United States Military flew over his head, low enough to the ground that they could feel the vibrations of their engines.

"We have war engines that you cannot conceive." Stiles's voice was cold and steely, and they stared as he dropped his glamour completely, growing in stature as he spoke, "We have tactics that you have never heard of. We have steel and metal weapons that can shoot from many leagues away from you. I give you this opportunity, gentlemen, to call your troops back to Faery while you still have the chance to survive this encounter."

The Generals were frightened, but Stiles could tell that they still looked stubborn until Boyd, Isaac, and Rupert dropped their glamours, too. They stared at Boyd, not knowing what he was, and Isaac as the ground around him froze, and Rupert, as he stretched his wings and grew into ten times the size the child that he was. Derek wolfed out, hunching down low to the ground, baring claws and fangs, and then Stiles signaled again and red lights appeared, pointing down at the troops in a way that caused panic among them.

The Generals looked at each other. They stared at Stiles, who was waiting for them to respond, holding his arm up in the air. "My arm is getting tired, but we will end you as soon as I put it down," Stiles promised him. Do you want to reduce your numbers again by another thousand?"

"He can't do it again, he's bluffing," another General said.

Stiles dropped his arm.

Allison shot a canister into the middle of the right flank, and it poured orange smoke out of it. The Generals started to sneer, but then a jet flew by again, dropping laser guided bombs on the troops, taking out the right flank.

"Three more flanks gentlemen, and we've been at this for approximately ten minutes," Stiles said. "Would you like to call your retreat, or shall I pull out the ground troops?"

"Retreat," the one on the spider said nervously, his spider rearing up underneath him, "Retreat!"

His people, apparently the inner left flank, turned around and ran with him hot on their heels, and they all disappeared into some sort of porthole.

Stiles raised an eyebrow and stared at the remaining four generals. Two of them, apparently the ones who had lost their people already, turned the creatures they were riding away from the parley, but Stiles allowed them the pride of slowly riding back to the portal.

It caused what some might call dissention in the remaining two thousand troops left.

"This is not over, metalzauber," the generals hissed. "We will be back…"

"You owe the Seelie Court another eight thousand years of fealty," Stiles said. "We will not be so merciful the next time."

And with that, the Unseelie court left the realm of man for the second time in their milenia of existence.


	12. Chapter 12

That summer, they lay in each others' arms on the hammock in drowsy contentment. Isaac and Boyd were being chased around Derek's big back yard by Rupert, who was back to his nine or ten year old body and strangely attending Beacon Hills Elementary so that he could keep an eye out for Isaac, who had come home with one too many black eyes for the dragon to be content to wait for the day to end before he made sure his boy was okay. And Stiles smiled at the thought of Rupert considering Isaac his boy, even though Boyd would sometimes push Rupert out of their room so that he could get some time with Isaac without the dragon interrupting their play time. Rupert would sulk, crossing his arms over his chest and glare at the stairs sitting on the couch, waiting for them to come downstairs. Then Isaac would curl up on the couch with Rupert while Boyd got distracted playing video games, and Rupert would quiet down because his boy was next to him and that was all that mattered.

Stiles knew that Rupert was just a huggable dragon, because he used to do the same thing with him. He just wanted a friend who was his own age, and the dragon wouldn't grow up for another couple thousand years.

Stiles rested with his head against Derek's chest, listening to the steady beat that calmed his nerves like nothing else could. School was back in session, and despite the other kids giving him a hard time about being the General in the War That Was Never Fought and the sixteen year old daddy to three rambunctious boys in the elementary school down the road, it was hard to take them seriously when he could come home and curl up on Derek. Because Derek was awesome like that, and when he would take Stiles to his high school dances most everyone shut up pretty quick-like.

"Stiles," Derek said in a sing-song voice that he used when he was trying to get his attention and Stiles wasn't paying attention.

"Hm?" Stiles mumbled into Derek's chest, because hey, Derek's chest. Nothing more needed said about that.

"Why didn't you let me in on that little planning thing with Tokala before the War?" Derek wanted to know.

Stiles grumbled some before rubbing his eyes open. "Rupert's old teacher had it right. War is Art."

"What?" Derek asked.

"I only know one art, Derek. That's making things with metal. You need two things to forge metal: a fire and a hammer. If you start with a hammer, hit the metal with it while it's cold, you get shattered metal laying everywhere, completely useless. If you throw the metal into the fire, you get a differently shaped lump of metal and that's it. When you fight a war, you have to time your strikes after the enemy has been sufficiently heated and it's ready to be shaped…" Stiles ran a hand over his face. "This is probably not making a lot of sense."

"Stiles, start at the beginning. Tell me what exactly happened," Derek said.

Stiles sighed. "Every single Fae is severely limited by the rules of their race. Every single rule is instituted because of our relationship with magic. For example, the Fae cannot lie. This is because lies weaken our magic, and not just a little bit. Magic is what keeps us alive, it is what sustains and nurtures us. Without it, we die because we are made from magic. My race is also severely weakened and simultaneously strengthened when we take a mate. That mate becomes our weakness, and anything that causes our mate pain weakens us. To become stronger, we take revenge on whatever hurts our mate. It isn't the noblest aspect of being a metalzauber, but all Fae know that harming our mates is a way to weaken us, while also knowing to expect revenge for such action. They expected me to panic at losing so much magic all at once; they expected it to make me stupid and to jump into the fight with anger as my motivation. They did not understand that I watched my father make peace with the dragons after the last dragon killed my mother. They did not know that I was prepared to weaken myself as my father had done, because peace is a far nobler pursuit than war. And then Tokala showed up, and then they made their antiquated move, and I had everything I needed to know about how to keep every single person on our side safe."

Derek was quiet for a while. "So you didn't tell me…"

"Because you have no poker face, darling," Stiles said. "You aren't afraid to show your feelings of anger, and before battle if you sense a danger to me you'll shove me out of the way or not let anyone near me. I needed to talk to them, to explain how their way of doing things was now irrelevant."

"But if your revenge consisted of killing two thousand of their warriors, when they killed seven of my family members and eleven members of my father's pack… isn't that a little bit of overkill?" Derek asked.

"And now my magic is very strong," Stiles shrugged.

"But couldn't you have let all of us fight?" Derek wanted to know, "Couldn't you have let me kill them?"

"That would have given them a chance to kill you. Had I just made Tokala lightning strike them all to death, or had the American military drop bombs on all of them and then let them fight you all, there was a chance that one of you could have been hurt, that I would have shattered pieces of metal lying about in the aftermath. You could have been one of those pieces. I would not have survived that, and you would not have survived had I been killed. I could not chance you getting hurt, Derek Hale. You mean too much to me, and so I will protect everything that you hold dear. It was better for them to call a retreat than to fight them all; they will not return as quickly as they would have had they been defeated in battle. Maybe next time, they will better plan their attack, but it will be hard as they are locked in Faery with no access to this reality. Maybe when they come back next time, they will be more willing to not court Death as they have been, realizing that they must find new ways to seek power. Or then, maybe when they finally come back again and Rupert is a full grown dragon, he'll just spit fire on all of them to death. Who knows?" Stiles ended his thoughts with such a teenage optimism that Derek had to smile at him.

"So you're really made from magic?" Derek asked, quirking an eyebrow at Stiles.

"Yes," Stiles said.

"And you said that you had a lot of magic now?"

Stiles paused for a moment. "Yes," he said, kind of breathlessly.

"So I've heard that two Fae can have children together, regardless of their sex," Derek nuzzled Stiles's neck.

"It takes love and magic," Stiles said, exposing his neck for Derek's lips.

"Could you have my baby?" Derek asked him, breathless.

"In five or six years, I might be ready," Stiles panted when Derek bit at his neck lightly.

"You could have my baby?" Derek asked again, unable to believe it.

"Yes," Stiles said. "I wouldn't get pregnant like a human, you understand," Stiles whimpered at the feel of Derek's hand sneaking up his shirt and stroking up the side of his chest, trying not to arch into it as their children ran around them. "There would have to be a fire, and I would have to pull our child out…"

Stiles felt Derek hardening against his hip, and he quit talking for a moment until he could remember how to speak. "The kids…"

"Are their parents going to pick them up?" Derek whispered harshly into Stiles's ear.

"They've been fostered with us," Stiles whispered back. "It's an old tradition, meant to strengthen the ties between Fae Houses, we're expected to treat them as our own children so that emotional bonds are forged and make us less likely to attack their houses. It also ensures loyalty, so that if they're attacked we're more likely to come to the defense of our children's families."

Derek growled into Stiles's neck. "I want you to myself," he licked a hot stripe up Stiles's neck.

"It isn't going to happen, lover mine," Stiles smiled. "Not for a couple hundred years, at least."

Derek growled. "Then we should probably feed them and put them to bed. The last week of school starts tomorrow, and they're going to be coming home in sugar comas with all the parties. You know I have to take over Tuesday duties in Isaac's class?"

"You're such a good papa," Stiles laughed, kissing Derek's temple.

Derek smiled down at Stiles before nuzzling his neck a little more. "Do I need to show up at your school this week?"

"Just because my dad had to go back to Toad Suck doesn't mean that you have to be my papa, too," Stiles groused. "That's just plain uncomfortable."

"I love it when you get a Southern accent," Derek growled, pulling Stiles out of the hammock with him.

Stiles smiled a little evily at Derek before turning his attention to their children. "Boys!" he yelled out, "Get on up in this here house and wash up for dinner."

The kids whined a little, but they listened to their daddy Stiles, pushing each other a little before going in through the back door.

"We're going to have a really good life," Derek says, smiling as his arms wrap around Stile's waist and resting his head on Stile's shoulder.

"We already have a really good life," Stiles agrees. He reaches back and runs his hand through Derek's hair, feeling the slippery soft mess trickling through his fingers. His hand traces the knobs of Derek's spine, down his back to feel the slightly raised skin of the tattoo that Rupert donated blood for on Derek's back. It's a chance, if Stiles was going to be killed in the future it meant that Derek would live on without him, but it's a chance that they're willing to take. Everything about this relationship is chance, but as long as they have each other they're willing to risk it.

Stiles drags his wolf back into the house, smilng at the miracle of a crock pot sitting on the counter. He put everything in there as soon as he got home from school, and he dished out the beef and the carrots and potatoes onto his children's and Derek's plates.

It was terribly domestic for them, and it was wonderful and beautiful for Stiles. He had always wanted a huge family, even though it was almost unheard of for the Fae to have a huge family. With Derek, he had children and a pack who were bound to be over after dinner so that they could do their homework together or watch TV or a movie, and there would be noise and shouting and fighting. Stiles loved it, loved it even though he really missed his father.

Getting the kids to bed was normally a chore, but the running around all weekend had worn them out so it was a quick instruction to get into the shower to Boyd and Rupert, running a bath for Isaac, threats for teeth brushing and then cuddling up so that Stiles could read them a story before tucking them in and turning the light out, an almost pointless action since the sun was still up. There would be some giggles coming from the boys' room before they passed out, but Stiles knew it wouldn't be long. Derek would be up in fifteen minutes for bodily threats if they weren't asleep, and then he would hug and kiss them all and make his way back down to Stiles where they would do the dishes together and wait for the pack to show up.

"I feel bad," Derek said, "I feel like I'm taking your childhood away from you."

Stiles shrugged. "Yeah, 'cause watching these kids for ten or fifteen years out of my two hundred year long childhood is really going to make me miss out on a lot."

Derek sighed, "No, I mean it. You should be doing high school stuff, parties and dating…"

Stiles put the last of the dishes away. "That's always an option. I could drop out of school and go later, if it bothers you that much. But I wouldn't give this up for the world, or all of the magic in it. This is what I want, Derek, and you are what I want more than that. Going out and dating other people will only make me miserable, most of the Fae are pretty much eunuchs until we find out mates. I don't have a desire go out because I've found everything that I want, right here."

Derek nodded his head, but he still looked concerned.

"You know, the King of the Fae has been King since he was five years old," Stiles said.

"What?" Derek asked.

"When your people are near extinct, most of them never get to be a child," Stiles said, slowly. "If there was an older couple to foster those kids with, you know Boyd's and Isaac's parents would have fostered them there. None of my people really expect any kid to be a kid for long. They would rather us all shack up and start making babies. All it takes is one really good war, or a few people who hate us, or a sickness and we're gone. My people would rather me be with a mate."

Derek blinked at Stiles a few times. "That's why your dad didn't protest at all when you told him you were mated to me."

Stiles nodded. "He and my mother tried for a very long time to have me. It isn't that my mom didn't have any magic, it was that my dad made really hard decisions so he was limited. It's hard to be powerful enough to have children, and then it's hard to be strong enough to survive after they're made. But I have enough magic, and while I'm weak afterwards you'll be strong enough to defend us. I'm not worried, and we might have enough children to make a difference. You're a good choice, for a mate."

Derek smiled. "You just want me 'cause I'm strong."

Stiles laughed. "You're right. Your ass has absolutely nothing to do with it at all."

They settled in the living room as the pack gathered, bringing with them snacks and drinks. Scott provided a movie and Lydia, Erica, and Allison spread out some history text books on the floor. Jackson and Danny were fighting over an afghan on the couch, and Stiles settled his head on Derek's shoulder as the movie began.

It was bliss. Stiles wasn't paying attention to whatever movie was on the screen, content to bask in the presence of his pack and Derek's arms. Derek's hands, normally so still, were constantly in movement against Stiles's skin, rubbing circles or just stroking the underside of his forearms. While he was never inappropriate in front of the rest of the pack, Stiles still let himself the feel of Derek's warm breath on his neck, and couldn't wait to go upstairs after everyone else had left. There were certain things that Derek was really good at, and Stiles was the only one who knew about it.

"So, you think things are going to be normal from now on?" Scott asked as the end credits started on the movie.

"Dude," Jackson snarled at him, "You realize you just cursed us for life?"

"What did I do?" Scott asked, looking offended.

"It's like saying that things are peaceful now, or that you're bored. You get attention from the wrong places," Lydia said, braining him over the head with a pillow.

"Oh come on, you don't really belive that, do you?" Scott asked, pulling the pillow out of Lydia's hands and laying back on it, smirking at her.

Everyone else just glared at Scott.

"You don't all believe that, do you?" Scott asked again, this time surprised.

Allison hit him on the head with a pillow, but Scott wouldn't ever defend himself against Allison so the rest of the pack was content to let her have at him while they discussed his stupidity.

Stiles watched them with some degree of amusement, curling up into Derek's arms as he chuckled at them all. They listened as the pack debated the degree of responsibility Scott carried for whatever adventure they were going to get into next with varying degrees of emotion until Stiles had enough.

"Okay, y'all have got to go home. It's late, and…"Stiles started to say, picking up bowls that had held popcorn and potato chips and putting empty bottles of soda into them to carry into the kitchen.

The girls started packing up their textbooks and the guys started folding the blankets to put back on the couches.

They were interrupted with frantic knocking at the door.

Everyone turned at the exact same time and glared at Scott.

"This is not my fault!" he protested, but everyone grabbed whatever pillow was closest and hit Scott on the head with it.

"You ready for this?" Stiles asked Derek.

Derek rolled his eyes, but he held Stiles close for just a moment longer before he got up off the couch and went to answer the door.


End file.
